May 11, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending May 11, 2008.
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April 15, 2008
My first day working at AOL back in the fall of 2006 I had the pleasure of having lunch with Tony Conrad as he was visiting to start working with the AOL. Since then, Sphere which I covered previously when it launched in May 2006, worked with both AOL News and myAOL Mgnet Recommendations. It is a pleasure to see that AOL has finally acquired Sphere for an undisclosed amount.
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April 10, 2008
AOL as they have just relaunched Switched as the hub for the newly created AOL Technology Network. The network will bring together content from Engadget, Switched, TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), Download Squad, Engadget Mobile and Engadget HD to form the second largest technology news publisher online.
The network will helps to combine all the great technology blogs offered by AOL and Weblogs, Inc which was acquired by AOL in 2005 and should make for a compelling advertising offering for Platform-A, AOL's advertising conglomerate.
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April 2, 2008
Taking a page out the Netflix and Amazon playbook, outbrain, a New York-based startup, officially launched yesterday to offer a ratings and recommendations widget for content. With outbrain bloggers, news, media, magazines, rss readers and other publishers/aggregators can add a rating and personalized content recommendation widget to their blogs and sites easily and free.
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March 27, 2008
Looking for free licensed content to be able to use on your own blog or website? Voxant Newsroom looks to help by distributing and promoting content from licensed content sources for free. Voxant offers publishers a place to find and embed licensed video, text, and photos from over two hundred news sources from a variety of providers. Voxant places advertising in the its embeddable content to monetize the content making it possible to keep the content available for free to users.
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March 27, 2008
If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, mark your calendars for BlogPotomac, a one day event aimed at providing advanced marketing insights beyond the average social media 101. BlogPotomac will be held on Friday, June 13, 2008 at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. 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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March 22, 2008
I was walking down the street in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month and was intrigued by a storefront symbol. I looked into the storefront windows and my eyes were met with colorful graffiti-like artwork, handmade toys and lots of tees. I had bumped into JoyEngine.
JoyEngine is a brand created by the boutique design firm cypher13 and offers a place for artists and designers to unite and share their work. The JoyEngine store doubles as an art gallery for local artists and toymakers. JoyEngine also has its own line of apparel. At JoyEngine, cypher13 promotes and sells artwork created by the cypher13 team, other local artists, and provides access to ultra-limited designer art toys, offers apparel by independent designers, and supplies the local street art scene with spraypaint, paint markers, and other art supplies. Online JoyEngine offers an blogging community for designers and artists where they can exchange ideas and showcase their work. They also offers some cool artist desktop backgrounds for download.
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February 27, 2008
Looking to explore and find a few new blogs on the Web? Blogged is blog directory launched earlier this week to aid discovery and exploration of the blogosphere. Blogged is self-funded by founders Kenneth Yeh and Gladys Kong and is powered by readers and also employs a full-time editorial staff to maintain the integrity of the directory.
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January 29, 2008
Are you gearing up for Super Bowl this weekend? Or better yet counting down the days till pitches and catchers report to another MLB Spring Training? I am. FantasySportsMatrix (FSM), a Sunnyvale, California startup, launched into beta today to offer the typical suite of social networking features to create a place for sports fans to interact.
With blogs, wiki's, forums, polls and a host of other types of content I could see sports addicts entering the social media conversation via a site like FSM since it offers a gentle way to introduce the "Average Joe" to wiki's, blogs and other user-generated content. As a sports fan, all I can think of is - Go Cubs!
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January 24, 2008
Microblogging platforms have been springing up like crazy these days as bloggers look for easier and shorter form ways to quickly express themselves online. Lifestreaming to these platforms also become more prevalent as an aggregation of online activities. I am a big fan of microblogging platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, and Soup.io. They offer a light but powerful platform for self-expression. But there is not a one size fits all solution for every blogger. Chyrp (found deceptively at chyrp.net) offers an open source blogging platform that is more of a medium weight blogging solution.
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January 7, 2008
Somewhat Frank Editor's Note: I am pleased to mention that my recent Somewhat Frank health 2.0 roundup article has made its way onto the Read/Write Web Network by appearing today on the fabulous Alt Search Engine blog. In case you are new to the blogosphere, Read/Write Web, Read/Write Talk, last100 and Alt Search Engines make-up the RWW Network and have been contributing excellent content to the masses everyday for years. I am a big fan of the RWW Network and I am honored to be a special guest contributor. Thanks to Charles Knight & Richard MacManus for showcasing some Somewhat Frank content.
Give the article a read here on Alt Search Engines.
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December 14, 2007
Distributing content is key to any serious blogger. There are a number of social news and sharing sites offering bloggers the ability to have sharing features on their site. Adding all the icons to your blog can cause some serious 'icon acne' and cramp the style of any blog design. So it is important to make it easy for your blog readers to share your content with others and social news sites alike. madKast, a Boulder, Colorado based start-up, recently launched to offer a way for bloggers to make sharing easy.
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December 3, 2007
There are a number of women involved in the technology industry, an industry which is made up of predominately men. I want to point out a few women in technology movements.
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September 26, 2007
This has truly been an action packed 2007 web/tech conference season thus far. I previously listed a number of conferences to attend in 2007 but as of late a number of new ones have popped up. I wanted to highlight few additional conferences as they are approaching fast and you might want to get your tickets booked now. You will find me speaking at these three conference...hope to see you there.
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September 10, 2007
Are you a celebrity news junkie? If so, you might want to check out Fafarazzi and put your celebrity tracking habits to use. Fafarazzi, a Massachusetts-based startup created by Eastland Media, offers place for celebrity news lovers to go head-to-head via celebrity fantasy sports leagues.
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August 31, 2007
BlogDay is here again. BlogDay is the one day celebration of the blogosphere created by Nir Ofir also of BlogTV fame. BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On BlogDay bloggers highlight or recommend five other blogs to their blog visitors aiding the discovery of new blogs on the Web.
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August 29, 2007
PlayboyU launched last week to offer a social entertainment community for college students only. Focused on solely on taking advantage of all the good things and good times that happen in college, PlayboyU offers a new web "campus" for students to play. Interestingly, PlayboyU is built on the social network application platform, Ning.
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August 17, 2007
What's buzzing on the web? Wouldn't it be nice to know? Using a a combination of techniques which include sophisticated algorithms, click tracking and human editors BuzzFeed, a NY-based startup, is place to find out what is buzzing on the Web.
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August 12, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending August 12, 2007.
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August 8, 2007
Spigit launched into beta in mid-July to offer up a startup simulation game to help entrepreneurs showcase new ideas and innovations and in the process connect with a network of professionals. Spigit seems to have blended a multiply player online simulation game with a social network while aimed at creating a new company. Spigit can act as a testing ground for new ideas by helping to predict if they will succeed or fail with less invested.
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August 5, 2007
Photo of the Week: Barry Bonds hit home run 755 last night in a game vs. San Diego tying Hank Aaron for most career home runs in Major League history. John Feeley was in attendance and captured history with his zoom lens in this shot (shown above). Somewhat Frank Weekly...
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July 31, 2007
Gary Vaynerchuk, the host of WineLibrary.com's video blog Wine Library TV is a pretty entertaining guy. I got a chance to see Gary's energy in action a few months back when he both demo'ed and sponsored at TECH cocktail DC 1. Gary's love for wine and charismatic personality has created...
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July 25, 2007
In case you missed it, San Francisco had a power outage today that was caused by an explosion downtown. The fire from the explosion knocked out electricity and several big siteswhich included Netflix, Craigslist, Typepad, Vox and LiveJournal - all were down for several hours. Somewhat Frank is powered by...
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July 22, 2007
Photo of the Week: I took a trip to Sausalito yesterday and took in some gorgeous sites including this little red sailboat in the Bay. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.22.07 Google Maps: A users guide to personalization LifeHacker offers a guide to personalizing Google Maps. The Impact of Facebook's Platform...
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July 15, 2007
Photo of the week: These green frog cupcakes were spotted and then were quickly devoured at the most recent TECH cocktail in Chicago. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.15.07 AOL Top Web Site Under New Ranking Nielsen/NetRatings will begin reporting total sessions and total time spent on a site in order...
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July 8, 2007
Photo of the Week: American Flag on Parade at Dewey Beach for the 'Running of the Bulls' taken by Matt Hirschmann. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.08.07 Facebook Sees Flood of New Traffic from Teenagers and Adults In the months prior to allowing open registration, Facebook.com’s traffic hovered at approximately 14...
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July 7, 2007
I recently attended Supernova 2007, a conference in San Francisco focused on innovation, and was interviewed by Adriana Gascoigne of Bub.blicio.us, Future Works and founder of Girls in Tech. The video interview (below) is found at the 3 minute 30 second mark on this 9:03 minute video clip. In the...
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June 30, 2007
Bub.blicio.us was in Palo Alto, California, yesterday covering the release of the iPhone at Steve Jobs' favorite Apple Store. This short video (above) highlights the day's events with interviews of Robert Scoble and Thomas Hawk. Interestingly, after all the iPhone mania settled down (around 7pm PST) I casually got in...
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June 27, 2007
Birthday logo thanks to Orli Yakuel. Somewhat Frank is embarking on the terrible two's - that's right, today is Somewhat Frank's blog birthday! I have to say the last two years have flown by with thousands of article and comments being generated on Somewhat Frank. Thank you to everyone who...
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June 17, 2007
Photo of the Week: Jen Consalvo recently snapped this photo titled backlight. A little sunshine is a beautiful thing and is good for the soul - this little yellow guy appears to agree. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.17.07 YouTube Remixer: Edit Videos Online At YouTube YouTube has officially launched YouTube...
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May 29, 2007
What's next? This is a question that many may be asking. At the 2007 Next Web conference (June 1, 2007 in Amsterdam) they are hoping to find some answers. In the meantime, check out this video (above) which was posted here. It was recorded via iChat Video as Tim O'Reilly...
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May 27, 2007
Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by James Yu at Pier 38 in San Francisco on Thursday night (May 24, 2007) as part of the NewTeeVee and MetaCafe Pier Screenings. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 05.27.07 Facebook Moving to An Open Platform Strategy Facebook has announced a new strategy...
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May 22, 2007
Rootly, a news aggregator site, has relaunched with new site design and additional features. With the help of Marshall Kirkpatrick who has been guiding Rootly looks much improved. It now looks like a news start-page. The new and improved Rootly offers highly customizable RSS feed powered vertical news search based...
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May 19, 2007
Is it just me or is Gabe Rivera turning up everywhere this week? It appears Gabe Rivera, the creator of techmeme and other news aggregator sites, had a very big week. I know Gabe is very modest, but I think the Mims song "This Is Why I'm Hot" might be...
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May 18, 2007
A few hours ago, TECH cocktail completed its first event in DC at the popular MCCXXIII bar (1223 Club DC, for the non Roman-numeral types). The event was packed with hundreds of guests mingling as the place rocked to music, wine, product demos and mingling. Over 225+ technology enthusiasts, VCs,...
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April 27, 2007
Founded in September of 2006, BusinessPOV is a Chicago-based weekday video blog focused on profiling companies, people and products that display elements of innovation, entrepreneurship and creative culture. Following a short video format the site is organized to offer top stories and local knowledge. Both video types provide valuable insight...
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April 21, 2007
A few months ago, I highlighted an inventive web 2.0 video titled, "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Kansas State University anthropology professor Michael Welsh. The brief article I wrote ended up on the Digg homepage which ultimately lead to its mainstream discovery - at last count...
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April 19, 2007
While standard businesses are not going away anytime soon Moo has been a web 2.0 cultural innovator. If you have been around the web 2.0 scene at all you know exactly what I am talking about. Moo, a London-based printing company, has created a new trend in business cards that...
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April 16, 2007
Looking for a fall conference to attend? Mike Arrington, editor of TechCrunch, has just announced the details of the TechCrunch20 conference at the VC 2.0 session he moderated at the Web 2.0 Expo. The conference is being co-organized by Jason Calacanis and Mike Arrington and sponsored by Sequoia Capital with...
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April 15, 2007
Photo of the week: This San Francisco Trolley photo taken by, friend and co-founder of TECH cocktail Eric Olson, was the first photo I found on Flickr related to the Web 2.0 Expo this week in SF. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.15.07 The Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us I...
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April 11, 2007
Yoono, a user powered suggestion community, will make it easy for its users to make more suggestions via the browser next week when it launches the "Buzz It" plugin. Yoono already offers browsing suggestions as you are visiting various web locations. The new browser applet will enable users to bookmark...
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April 7, 2007
End of the web's free ride? Doubtful. As a former Tribune Co. employee it was surprising to see the Washington Post article published today (April 7, 2007) saying that, soon-to-be Tribune Co. owner and real estate billionaire, Samuel Zell was set on trying to make news aggregators pay for newspaper.com...
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April 2, 2007
Topix, a local news aggregator, has launched a substantial redesign and domain change (from Topix.net to Topix.com). The new design also offers an updated citizen journalistic direction which empowers users to be the editors of the news site. This is the second redesign in the last two years for Topix....
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March 31, 2007
JibJab, the online video site which came to fame during the 2004 U.S. presidential election with videos like "The Land," has created a new video series called the "The News" and has decided to include some bloggers. Bloggers Mike Arrington, Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo were featured around the 1:20...
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March 18, 2007
Photo of the Week: This is a photo I took in my old neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago prior to moving on to AOL in Virginia. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.18.07 Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google Remember when Napster was a lawsuit...
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March 17, 2007
The Go2Web2 blog, written by Israel-based Orli Yakuel, is a superb blog that showcases interesting web 2.0 products a few times a week as it manually aggregates products to place in its web 2.0 directory, Go2Web20.net. The Go2Web2 blog just turned one year old yesterday (March 16, 2007) and to...
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March 15, 2007
As scientists recently drafted a report that describes a dire outlook for planet Earth, the effects of global warming on the planet have literally been a hot topic (no pun intended) and even made a recent stop at the 79th Annual Academy Awards. However, there are a number of environmental...
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