May 16, 2008
I just spoke at the Social Rockstar Workshop at Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. about Social Media & Blogging. It was a great conversation and thank you to everyone that attended. I have uploaded to docstoc the online document sharing site for anyone that would like to take a look at the presentation.
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May 15, 2008
If you are down in Atlanta, Georgia today and tomorrow you might want to swing into the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair which is taking place. The worlds best young scientists, including many Georgia students will all be on hand showing off their technology and engineering masterpieces. Check out the video below for a quick preview.
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May 5, 2008
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.
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May 2, 2008
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.
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April 28, 2008
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 conversations, showing off 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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April 27, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending April 27, 2008.
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April 19, 2008
You have probably seen the Lijit search widget on a number of sites around the Web. It has been the search option for SOMEWHAT FRANK and TECH cocktail for sometime as it offers some great site search analytics in a manageable and easy to digest format. I even get a weekly statistics email from Lijit keeping me updated as to how search is performing every week and what people are searching for.
Frank Gruber as a lijit search widget When I visited Boulder, Colorado back in March 2008 for our first TECH cocktail Boulder I got a chance to visit the Lijit Networks headquarters and I captured it on video. Thanks to Tara "Tarable" Anderson for the impromptu guided tour and for turning me into a Lijit search widget (shown to the right).
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April 17, 2008
TripIt, the social travel management site which I reviewed previously, has received $5.1 million in Series B funding. The funding was provided by Sabre Holdings, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and European Founders Fund. The series B round will be used to expand development, marketing and support for TripIt users.
TripIt has been on a roll aggressively rolling out social and a mobile interface since launching at TechCrunch40 last year.
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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 11, 2008
There are so many things to remember these days that it can be somewhat difficult to keep track of everything. While notes in a moleskin, sticky notes, emails to yourself and photos of things you want to remember might be a few ways to remember things - all these methods seem to scatter reminders all over the place. Evernote, a Sunnyvale, California based startup, looks to offer a place to send, store and retrieve all of the things you need to remember.
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April 9, 2008
Smaller publishers like myself currently do not have lots of options when it comes to CPM ad solutions and there are lots of publishers just like me. Quite frankly the options are slim pickings. Platform A's Advertising.com, an AOL owned company, looks to change all that by today launching PubAccess a web-based self-service advertising program for smaller publishers. PubAccess will give small publishers access to the Advertising.com ad network.
PubAccess gives publishers control over their ad inventory within the Advertising.com display network and allows them to block advertisers and categories, pull tags and view activity reports. PubAccess has a minimum requirement of 500,000 impressions per month for the CPM program and there is no minimum for the affiliate program. PubAccess will debut at the ad:tech conference next week in San Francisco.
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April 7, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Question: Stanford University recently launched on on-campus venture fund called SSE Ventures. I think this is a great idea but I do not thing Stanford University is the only school that is doing this. So I thought I would ask SOMEWHAT FRANK readers to try and come up with other schools that might have similar programs. Here is a SOMEWHAT FRANK question for you:
What Schools Offer On-Campus Venture Funding?
Leave the school name, fund or program in the comments section below.
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April 5, 2008
The Illinois I.T. Association CityLIGHTS 2008 Awards Gala took place in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, April 3, 2008. The event was held at Union Station which you might recognize from the epic scene from the movie The Untouchables where Kevin Costner saves a baby carriage while also shooting up the Al Capone gangsters on its marble steps. While did not save any babies TECH cocktail, the community building startup that I co-founded with Eric Olson, was nominated for the CityLIGHTS Award for its positive impact in connecting the Illinois technology community. I am please to report, that TECH cocktail took home the hardware. I was deeply humbled by winning the award as it serves as validation that all the long hours and hard work is truly helping to sculpt a better connected local technology community while helping to amplify that same community to the world.
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April 3, 2008
I am pleased and somewhat humbled that TECH cocktail, a little events startup which I co-founded with Eric Olson back in May 2006, has been nominated as a finalist for the Illinois Technology Association CityLIGHTS Award. Over 700 great entrepreneurs, startups and established companies will be in attendance tonight as the awards are presented.
TECH cocktail is nominated for the CityLIGHTS Award which is given to an individual or individuals that have made a significant impact on the Illinois technology community. The list of finalists include:
* Ron and Jeff Galowich, co-Founders, Initiate Systems
* Bob Geras, president, LaSalle Investments
* Brian Knudson, CEO, NogginLabs, Inc.
* Eric Olson and Frank Gruber, founders, TECH cocktail
* Brad Spirrison, president, MidwestBusiness.com
TECH cocktail was started as a way to better connect and amplify the local technology community and being a finalist for this award validates that all our hard work has been paying off. Our first TECH cocktail CONFERENCE in May should further along this mission - don't forget to sign up now. Cheers!
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March 23, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 23, 2008.
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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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March 21, 2008
I am pleased to announce TECH cocktail DC 2 will be Thursday, April 24, 2008 in Washington, DC. The social mixer event will look to unite the DC, Maryland and Virginia bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and other business professionals interested in the technology arena for an evening of fun as we showcase and amplify the local tech scene.
Here are the details:
Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008
Time: 6:30pm - 9pm
Venue: MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20036 (Map)
Cost: $0 - It’s free!
RSVP: techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com
The event is sponsored by AOL and Viget Labs - and there are a few sponsorship spots open so reach out if you are interested in supporting the movement. Startups will be showing off their stuff at the event and there are still a few demo spots open so let me know if you are interested. It should be a great time.
Also don't forget...we are hosting a TECH CONFERENCE on May 29th - SIGN UP TODAY!
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March 21, 2008
You may recall Bode Miller, the USA Olympic silver medal skier and 2008 Alpine Skiing World Cup Champion, apparently he is doing more than just skiing these days as he has teamed with PathConnect to create SkiSpace, a social network for skiers and snowboarders. SkiSpace, not to be confused with MySpace, launched in December 2007 and offers basic social networking features.
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March 20, 2008
I have been to a number of industry events and I don't know how many times I either run out of cards are find myself cardless but technology has made it a lot easier to connect. LinkedIn recently joined Facebook and a number of other sites that have created iPhone experiences which makes it pretty easy to contact people and connect immediately thus online identity has replaced one of the features of offline identity - the business card.
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March 18, 2008
CBS Television stations today announced the launch of the CBS Local Ad Network as it looks to get into the advertising distribution game by connecting with local bloggers and social media Web sites.
At first glance, I thought CBS was looking to incorporate blogs and other social media content into the local CBS news sites but after reading on that is not the case at all, it turns out CBS is just leveraging bloggers looking to generate some revenue on their blog or social media content. Network participants can place what CBS is calling a widget (with a huge skyscraper ad unit) on their sites and in return receive a rev-share. Nothing new here. It might be the right program for bloggers or social media content producers looking for a way to monetize and not sell ads though I have no idea what the rev-share looks like and it would be worth a look before jumping in and giving CBS ad impressions.
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March 18, 2008
The Tribune Company, an old newspaper giant, has just announced an iPhone compartable version of one of its flagship properties, the Chicago Tribune. As a former Tribune employee it gives me great joy to see my old hometown paper now viewable on my iPhone at this URL: chicagotribune.com/iphone.
They have not enabled an auto redirect to when I am viewing ChicagoTribune.com from my iPhone but do promote the iPhone option instead. I figure the auto redirect on the iPhone will be coming soon. Congrats to the Tribune on embracing the new device. Thanks to Steve Rubel for pointing it out.
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March 18, 2008
Are you a fashion trend setter? If so, you might want to check out Polyvore. Polyvore is a social fashion site where users can create arrange outfits or inspiration boards to share where you and others can potentially buy the included items. Polyvore enables users to drag and drop clothing items or snag items from the Web t0 create new outfits which are then tied into various shopping sites and could offer some interesting revenue sharing options. Launched in February 2007 and backed by Benchmark Capital, Polyvore recently hit the one million outfit mark.
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March 13, 2008
Wow! AOL buying Bebo for $850 million was a pleasant surprise to wake up to this morning. I think this is a smart move for AOL as Bebo is currently the third largest social network on the Web behind Facebook and MySpace. With AIM offering one of the larger social graphs on the Web but a turnstile of online social networking site attempts in the last two years. It looks like AOL has finally decided to invest externally in the space which adds to the large number of other acquisitions that recently occurred in the social platforms group which include Goowy and Yedda.
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March 13, 2008
Creating flashy multimedia pieces of content for the Web might have just gotten a little easier as Sprout Builder opened its doors to the public today. This Hawaii-based startup first popped up on my radar at DEMO 08 as they first reveled Sprout Builder. The Flash toolkit makes it easy for anyone to create a rich interactive page, widget or part of a page without knowing how to write a line of code.
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March 10, 2008
Kathy Sierra spoke yesterday at South by Southwest Interactive and shared some wonderful tidbits on how to "woo" users. I took some notes from the session and compiled them below. Kathy started out by saying creating a product:
"Think about ways to make your users really good at something."
She went on to explain by saying you need to work on creating a hi-res user experience. No one is passionate about something they suck at so making it easy to be awesome is a key to creating passionate users.
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March 8, 2008
On a clear, crisp evening in Boulder, Colorado over two hundred technology enthusiasts piled into The Foundry Billiards Club to better connect and amplify the technology signal of the region. The event, TECH cocktail Boulder in partnership with DEMO, showcased five startups from the local area. The event was sponsored by Boulder-based Lijit and Chicago and soon to be also Boulder-based skinnyCorp - thank you both!
Since TECH cocktail is one of my own creations with co-founder Eric Olson, we were really enjoyed the evening getting to hangout with some of the technology "movers and shakers" in the Denver/Boulder area. For more details check out the official TECH cocktail Boulder 1 photos and event wrap-up article. Read on for more on the startups that demoed at TECH cocktail Boulder.
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March 7, 2008
Yesterday Apple released their long-awaited iPhone SDK...sort of. For those who don't drink the Apple Kool-aid, Apple originally said that only web applications could be used to create iPhone applications. In October, after three months of unauthorized unlocking programs and hacks to install native iPhone applications, they reversed their decision and announced they would release a software development kit (SDK), so developers could write native code.
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March 3, 2008
Compete, the Boston-based web analytics and online market research firm startup founded in 2000, was just acquired by Taylor Nelson Sofres plc (TNS), a leading market information and insight company for $75 Million. Compete leverages clickstream data to determine traffic, engagement and other valuable analytics. According to the press release TNS plans to leverage this data to provide insight based on online and offline behavior and on consumer attitudes. Congrats to Compete on the recent acquisition!
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March 2, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 2, 2008.
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February 29, 2008
I hate long meetings when I feel that something could be solved with a simpler method like AIM, email, a text message or a phone conversation. When a meeting is needed, coordinating meetings can be as time consuming as the actual meeting itself. If you have a personal assistant you probably do not have to worry about this but if you do not then you probably feel my pain. ikordo, created by UK-based Volutio, offers a product that help facilitate organizing the meeting for you by putting into an organized system that leverages various communication streams to lock down your meeting times.
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February 26, 2008
BricaBox, the NY-based structured content platform I previously reviewed, publicly launched today to enable anyone to create access and create these rich content experiences with ease. Funded sole by its founders BricaBox has been refered to a "wiki" on steroids (don't tell MLB or Congress) or "WordPress for structured content" as it offers a way for publishers tools to better display listings and such. It should also be noted that BricaBox offers social capabilities to enable community and sharing features which are sometimes confused with those of Ning or other social networking platform options.
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February 26, 2008
I returned to may hometown last week to co-host TECH cocktail Chicago 7. The event pulled in about five hundred technology enthusiasts, founders, startups, bloggers and VC's. As a facilitator of the event is it gratifying to see the community come out in such numbers.
The evening was kicked off with some TECH cocktail news which included the release of the newly revamped TECH cocktail website and the announcement of the first annual TECH cocktail CONFERENCE. Both of which were conversations points throughout the event but the real focus was on six fresh new Midwest startups that showed off their stuff at the event.
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February 24, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending February 24, 2008.
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February 23, 2008
If you are a hip t-shirt junkie you probably have found something on community driven t-shirt site threadless. skinnyCorp is a Chicago-based startup that offers some great community driven websites. Some of the sites that they are responsible for include:
threadless a popular t-shirt design community driven e-commerce site.
Naked & Angry a high quality clothing from fabric patterns submitted and chosen by the brand’s audience.
Extra Tasty a community driven drink recipe site.
Yay Hooray a forum that we made to help us learn how to make community-driven sites on the Web.
They have also have a few others as well. Read on to find out how they this creative shop works as I visit their Chicago-based headquarters.
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February 21, 2008
I am pleased to say that TECH cocktail, the events startup that was created by Eric Olson and I back in Ma y 2006 has made a couple of exciting moves today by launching a substantial redesign of the TECH cocktail website that we have been working on for the last couple months. In addition, you might notice that we also have announced the first ever TECH cocktail CONFERENCE (or TECH CONFERENCE for short) which will take place in Chicago on May 29, 2008. Register now - it should be a great event!
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February 21, 2008
Trying to keep up to speed with the latest corporate or team communications can be a bit daunting. LiquidTalk, a Chicago-based startup, offers a business solution to help keep people in the corporate look via the devices (iPhones and BlackBerry) that we all have on us at all times. It is like having iTunes for business as it syncs all your corporate communication messages to your device for on the go consumption on your own terms.
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February 20, 2008
Looking for a little help on your next home project? If you live in the San Francisco area you might be in luck as GenieTown, a Palo Alto-based startup founded by a group of Stanford entrepreneurs, officially opened to the world today. GenieTown offers a platform for anyone looking for local services to either browse through a broad range of specific service providers or post a job request and invite qualified responses. GenieTown creates an eBay-like marketplace for services.
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February 19, 2008
XING, the social network for professionals which is extremely popular in Europe, has just published some numbers showing off its continued growth. According to a recent release, XING, has 5 million members registered which has contributed to reached revenues of 19.61 million euros or approximately 28.74 million U.S. dollars. XING founder and CEO, Lars Hinrichs had this to say:
"We delivered outstanding results for the 2007 fiscal year, and have already demonstrated this year that XING is not only an active consolidator in the European business networking market, but is also striding ahead with organic growth and has shown incredible innovation."
Some of this could be attributed to additional revenue streams that were created by expanding XING's e-Commerce and Advertising.
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February 17, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending February 17, 2008.
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February 15, 2008
A movement that started as a thread in the eBay forums has turned into an all out eBay Seller Boycott from February 18 - 25. The sellers on eBay have united and are staging to lash out against eBay for recent seller fee raises and feedback changes. A similar eBay boycott was successful for sellers in 2005 so it appears they are looking for a repeat success. They have even created a YouTube video for the eBay boycott.
I am not a big eBay buyer or seller but I think this little boycott could give other startups in the space an opportunity. If you are looking to sell handmade goods you might give Esty a try. If you are looking to just get rid of something in your local area you could leverage craigslist. There are lots of other options as well, so if you have a startup that is an alternative to email drop a comment on this article with the information.
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February 14, 2008
AOL has announced a strategic content and advertising partnership with CitySearch an IAC owned company. The agreement enables AOL CityGuide, AOL Local Search and MapQuest leverage CitySearch's local content and in return CitySearch gains access to AOL's distribution. CitySearch CEO, Jay Herratti had this to say:
"This partnership is a classic ‘win-win’ for both companies; Citysearch’s content is great for AOL’s audience, AOL’s reach is great for Citysearch’s advertisers who will gain access to qualified local customers and the ability to deliver a consistent message across the web, and both companies will benefit from incremental revenue."
Sounds like a simple enough deal to me. AOL will help get more ad units in front of Citysearch users and CitySearch will provide its local city reviews and information to AOL - makes sense.
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