Engagd, created by Faraday Media, has launched to offer web developers a toolkit of services for tracking attention data (the things users do on the Web). Leveraging Attention Profiling Mark-up Language or APML, Engagd offers a few different Web services empowering users to control their own personal Attention
Profiles, and developers to quickly and easily add Attention Awareness
to their applications and mashups.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Sunday, August 05, 2007
iPhone Secret Features, Flickr Video & Tools, Google Mashup Editor, Facebook on Netvibes, Best Conferences & Twiistup
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 Tidbits: 08.05.07
Twiistup 2: 08.08.07 - Sign Up Today!
Time to for Twiistup 2, you may recall I attended Twiistup 1 on my birthday in Santa Monica, California and had a blast. If you are going to be in Venice, California this coming Wednesday (August 8, 2007) you should stop by Air Conditioned Supper Club and Twiistup too! SIGN UP HERE.
How To Become A Blogger
Stowe Boyd dishes 5 simple steps to becoming a blogger. It is a common question, I am glad he addressed it.
Facebook Meet Netvibes: Netvibes Introduces the Facebook Widget
The new Netvibes Facebook Widget launched to allow users to view their Facebook notifications and friends. You can now access your Facebook info on Netvibes, and keep up to date on what your friends are doing.
Secret New iPhone Features
Walt Mossberg points out how Apple issued its first iPhone update this week. And, while the company billed it as merely a bug-fix and security-improvement patch, in fact it has several small feature improvements that Apple hasn’t announced or documented.
FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts
Check out some Flickr tools that Mashable pulled together for Flickr addicts like me.
Google Mashup Editor
Read/Write Web got beta access to the new Google Mashup Editor which provides a simple interface that enables developers to make basic web applications and mashups quickly. And again, like Yahoo! Pipes, it is very definitely aimed at developers.
Reconfirmation: Flickr To Add Video
Flickr has been rumored to be adding video since August but it appears that they could do it sooner than later.
Personalize Your Site’s Content With MineKey
MineKey is a startup that makes adding personalization to any website simple through their embeddable widget.
Perform Powerful Searches Visually with SearchCrystal
searchCrystal enables you to perform powerful searches visually. Their wonderful platform makes it possible to explore and filter 50 - 500 web pages, images, videos, blogs in a single display that guides people toward relevant info in a structured way.
What Web Conferences to Attend
I wrote up a pretty extensive list of conferences worth looking into back in January. Of course a few other conferences have popped up over the last few months. Read/Write Web weighs in on the conferences to check out.
Friday, July 27, 2007
RSS Mixer Makes Blending Feeds Easy
RSS Mixer is a simple application for mixing multiple RSS feeds together into one feed. Interestingly, you can then take the new feed and output a custom feed for your iPhone, an Apple Widget, snaggable widget or feed reader.
I created a feed mashup for TECH cocktail and Somewhat Frank here. Of course you could give myAOL Favorites feed reader if you create a folder add a bunch of feeds and click the green "Mix & Share" button.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Ask 3D Launches, Amazon Buying Netflix?, New AOL Feed Reader, WordPress vs. Movable Type, Web 2.0 Viral Growth Secrets, Gayest Sites & Widget News
Photo of the Week: Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch from Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom by Josh Hallett was taken this week with the successful launch of the space shuttle.
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.10.07
Major Relaunch For Ask: Ask3D
It looks very sharp. I like the way they allow users to personalize the
wallpaper behind the search box with a few different colorful skins.
Very innovative and 3D yummy design.
Will Amazon Purchase Netflix?
Rumor has it (coming from major news outlets) that movie rental company Netflix may be purchased by internet retail giant. Does it make sense?
Who Matters Now?
Business 2.0 Magazine invites you to vote for the business people who inspire, inform and infuriate you, from CEOs to entrepreneurs to media stars. Vote for Pedro Mike Arrington.
Secrets to Web 2.0 Viral Growth
Forbes.com has a short but informative article in which Roelof Botha (the Sequoia Capital venture capitalist instrumental in the success of YouTube and PayPal) shares two tips on how to have your service explode in membership using viral marketing.
Watchdog group flunks Google on privacy practices
In what looks to be brewing into a mutual smear campaign, London-based Privacy International has ranked Google among the worst top Internet sites for privacy protection, and Google is reportedly taking the watchdog group to task.
All New AOL Feed Reader Coming Soon
This new feed reader looks pretty sexy...I cannot wait to see it go live. :)
Clearspring Lands Major Deal With NBC
Clearspring, a Virginia-based company that demoed at TECH cocktail DC 1, announced it was chosen by NBC to be its exclusive widget platform for the next year. This is a major deal for Clearspring, and for NBC as well. The specific terms of this business arrangement have not been disclosed.
Yourminis Delivering Triple Widget Play
Yourminis delivers a triple play of widgets: online personalized desktop widgets, actual desktop widgets and blogs widgets.
What’s the gayest site on the web?
With June being Gay Pride month throughout the US and the World, Compete.com tries to uncover the gayest site on the web.
The Top Social Networks Where Alcohol is Allowed
Mashable looks at the various drink 2.0 web sites.
Feedtwister Lets You Mix Feeds
After registering with Feedtwister, members can begin adding their favorite RSS feeds. You can create as many lists as you like, and each list is a combination of the RSS feeds you selected.
WordPress vs. Movable Type
The interesting question is how the market will respond to an open source battle between the old blogger favorite and the new blogger favorite.
Search is history, says Yahoo!
Although Yahoo!, like Google, has talked before about developing a more personalised web, with relevant information delivered directly to readers, this was the first time that the company has said publicly that search will become less important.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Poly9 Offers 3D FreeEarth
Poly9, a group of devolopers based in Quebec City, recenty launched a web-based 3D Earth product called FreeEarth that requires no download. Free is pretty slick and I would love to see FreeEarth as an embeddable widget!
A Flash-based application, FreeEarth, offers an open API that can be leveraged to create some interesting mashups. If you a twitter fan check out twittervision3D. If you show Flickr love then you might want to check out flickrvision.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Sputtr: Simply Search From One Place
Tired of having to go open a number of browser windows to perform a search across a number of search engines? Sputtr wants to make it easier by putting search engine results to your favorite search engines in one page and just one click away from results. As it's name implies, you don't need to sputter to perform several searches from various sites. I know what you are thinking, it sounds like a trivial mashup but I thought Sputtr's simple approach and clean, aesthetically pleasing design were worth showcasing.
With Sputtr, you simply put in a search term then click an icon from the search options below the search box to be taken to results. Like I said, it is a clean and simple approach but so is Google and look where they are now. 
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
FreshBooks For Web Invoices & More
What are some good invoicing applications to use?
A friend of mine recently asked me this very question and I surprisingly drew a blank. So I made it my mission to seek out an anwser. FreshBooks, a Toronto-based startup, offers an online invoicing and time tracking application that nicely fits the bill.
I do not consider invoicing systems the least bit moving but I
was pleasantly surprised with FreshBooks as it offers some design elements that resemble a 37signals product. With FreshBooks a company can customize the layout of the
application and all of the invoices and reports. I have included a
screen-shot to the left of sample invoice I created (click it to
enlarge). Interestingly, FreshBooks recently integrated with the 37signals project management product Basecamp to offer a super small business mashup and API.
Aside from its design elements, Basecamp integration and invoice customizations, FreshBooks' billing options caught my attention as you can send bills via email or by ground mail with return envelopes directly from FreshBooks. FreshBooks also offers storage for documents and the ability to create reports.
Bottom-line: FreshBooks offers a free online application for managing your small business invoices and time-sheets.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Death to DRM, Future of RSS, AOL'Sphere It Widget, Zillow Relaunches, Blog Search Wars, Google My Maps & P2P Loans
Photo of the week: robobunny by Courtney Brooke. Happy Easter.
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.08.07
DRM-Free Music
EMI announced DRM-free music earlier in the week and now Microsoft is hinting at doing the same. Is this the death of DRM?
500 million+!!! AOL'Sphere Goes Live
AOL and Sphere quietly turned on Sphere It in their AOL News, Sports and Entertainment articles. The Sphere It widget is great - I have one too on all my posts as it offers users the ability to find related content. Love it. If you would like one for your site be sure to check out the Sphere tools.
Google Personalizes Maps
Google Maps launched a new feature to its maps product this week (April
5, 2007) called My Maps with offers users the ability to personalize a
Google Map. My Maps enables anyone to draw, plot or color a Google Map
without having to know an ounce of coding knowledge thus bringing
simplified personal mapping to the masses.
Yahoo Testing Alpha (Beta) Multi Search
Search Engine Land covers Yahoo's launch of Alpha a new search experience. Alpha is really more of a multi-search tool that submits your query to multiple sources. It really reminds me of AOL FullView Search.
10 Things You Can Do With Mixed Media RSS
Marshall Kirkpatrick, of SplashCast Media, presents a list of ways to leverage mixed media feeds produced by SplashCast. He provides big-picture use-cases and explains how you can use other products I have previously reviewed like Tumblr, FeedBurner, ZapTxt and Rasasa to create some interesting feed mashups.
The Future of RSS
Read/Write Web looks at RSS today and asks if RSS is evolving into a tool for delivering complex, semantically rich information. A great article for anyone looking for information on RSS.
Technorati and the blog search wars
Mathew Ingram dissects Technorati's recent state of the blogosphere. It is still interesting to see how fast Technorati.com has been growing: over 9 million unique visitors in March, up 141 per cent in a single quarter, and double-digit growth every month in page views as well. Not bad.
Financing Web Work with Prosper.com
Prosper.com enables peer-to-peer loans for startups and anyone looking to do their own thing. If you are looking for funding you may want to check it out.
Zillow Relaunch - Adds Its Own Q&A Service
Every home in the Zillow database has its own dedicated page. Any user can now also add photos and information about any home and its neighborhood to the site. Users can also indicate if a home is for sale, and the asking price, as well as additional info.
Weblin’s Avatars Surf the Web with You
Kristen Nicole reviews the recent launch of Weblin, a program that lets you create a web avatar that travels with you on your web journey. According to the article when you come across a site where there are other Weblins, you’ll be able to see them and strike up a conversation. Chatting avatars on the web - interesting!
iminlikewithyou, an interesting new look at online flirting
iminlikewithyou is all about flirting, well, the art of flirting. Users sign up for the service and answer a few basic questions about themselves. Photos can be added as well as other personal information to be rewarded with valuable flirting points.
Widgets Arrive for the iPod
The iPod is still largely a closed development platform, but that's not stopping some folks from creating widgets that run on it. Steve Rubel points to two products from Kooloroo that bring handy information to the iPod.
Friday, April 06, 2007
ThinkFree Unleashes 3 New Offerings
ThinkFree, an online office production suite I recently reviewed, has released three new features which include an API to the ThinkFree Viewer, a WordPress Plugin and instant upload to ThinkFree DocExchange. We will take a look at these new options a little more closely below.
ThinkFree Viewer API - Now you can with the release of the ThinkFree Viewer API. The API will enable developers to integrate the ThinkFree Viewer into any product to display an array of file types on any system regardless of the OS and software installed. Below is an example of the ThinkFree Viewer in action. What would you mashup with it?
ThinkFree Viewer WordPress Plugin - WordPress users can now rejoice at the fact that you can add ThinkFree documents into their blog posts and readers can view them directly from the browser without the need of office software. You can find the ThinkFree Viewer WordPress plugin here.
Instant ThinkFree Doc Upload - Looking to position itself as the "Flickr of Office 2.o" ThinkFree file uploads will soon be directly uploaded to the ThinkFree DocExchange, a publicly accessible area, where users can view, comment and rate documents from the ThinkFree community.
ThinkFree offers a great online office suite and its constant improvements like these that should keep its users happy and ahead of the pack of Office 2.0 options.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sloog.org Offers Social Bookmarking Mashup For Second Life Virtual World
Mapping mashups have become extremely common in the web 2.0 as developers have leverages web services to combine data with maps of Earth. I recently had a close encounter with a mapping mashup of a new kind called Sloog.org.
Sloog.org is a bookmarking service for Second Life residents and offers a unique mashup experience because rather than plotting items to a map of Earth, it plots location in the virtual world, Second Life. That's right, Sloog.org leverages a tagging infrastructure to offers users a way to search Second Life. Sloog.org is free and enables users to tag and search both places and avatars. Users (with Second Life access) can also teleport directly to visit locations bookmarked with the service. Sloog.org showcases some of the most recently visited and most popular places like Mercedez Benz Island, Virtual Morocco and Mosi-Mosi Headquarters. I did a search and found AOL Pointe, the AOL virtual real estate, and displayed the results below.
Sloog.org is a product of the Barcelona-based multimedia studio Mosi-Mosi. They are determined to make Second Life and a better place. To stay up to speed with the latest Sloog.org happenings check out the official Sloog.org blog.
Bottom-line: Sloog.org is a social bookmarking services for Second Life that offers users a great way to search and discover new parts of the virtual world.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Unthirsty Quenches Happy Hour Thirst
I know it is just the start of a new week but if you are looking to ease into it with a happy hour, you might want to check out Unthirsty. Unthirsty is a local happy hour search engine and directory. Unthirsty's mission is simply to connect users with the closest happy hour possible. With Unthirsty you enter your address and the site presents you with local happy hour drink and food specials on an Ajax Google map. Upon interacting with the plotted locations, drink specials and happy hour schedules appear in a bubble above the venue. For example, I searched for a happy hour in Mountain View, California and found a couple which are plotted in the screen-shot below.
If interactive maps are not your thing, Unthirsty also offers a list view of the happy hour directory. Additionally, Unthirsty offers a mobile version of the site that offers a single text box to enter a location and receive a list of the closest happy hours. This could come in handy on the road so just remember this URL: unthirsty.com/mobile. Finally, you can help Unthirsty by submitting a happy hour location.
Hopefully, Unthirsty makes handling the start of another week a little easier - cheers!
Friday, March 02, 2007
18Seconds.org Spotlights Energy Savings
18Seconds.org is campaign Yahoo recently launched in conjunction with Lawrence Bender, Oscar-winning producer of the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," devoted to informing the world about the energy savings associated with switching from a normal light bulb to a compact fluorescent lamp. The campaign is based on the idea that is only takes 18 seconds to change a regular light bulb to an energy saving compact fluorescent light bulb. Lawrence Bender authored a guest post on the Yahoo! corporate blog which stated:
"If every American swapped just one bulb, it would save more than $8 billion in energy costs, prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal, and keep the equivalent of two million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere."
Those are some pretty eye opening numbers. At the same time it is inspiring to hear that everyone can pitch in to help save energy and ultimately the planet. The 18Seconds.org web site offers a mashup which places the current compact florescent lamp purchase numbers by geographic location on a Yahoo map. Currently, Arkansas is the leading energy saving state and Bellingham, Washington is the leading energy saving city in the United States. For additional information about 18Seconds.org, check out the video below.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
OpenCongress Aggregates U.S. Politics
OpenCongress, a political information mashup, is a great resource for anyone strongly interested in politics on Capitol Hill. By cataloging information (and there is a lot information) in an easy to navigate format, users have access to voting records, and statements by Senators and Members, including the always interesting breakdown of who or what is donating to a particular legislators campaigns.
OpenCongress, a project by Participatory Politics Foundation and The Sunlight Foundation, leverages Google News to obtain news articles about Congress, and Google Blog Search and Technorati to obtain blog posts about Congress. OpenCongress also uses these automated services to search the internet widely for relevant search terms to display on OpenCongress pages for bills and Members of Congress. For example, if you are looking to find out about the latest status on the bill S.574, OpenCongress offers pretty healthy aggregation of blogs and other information and even offers a feed about it.
For those interested more in issues than politicians, the site offers a
wide-angle lens look at the big issues such as health care or criminal
justice as well as tracking of legislation before the House and
Senate. The site is a must stop after reading any news article to give
readers access to all the information the political reporters,
operatives, or politicians themselves have. Hopefully OpenCongress expands into polling information. The community continues to lack a refined and sophisticated website providing detailed and extended polling data, not merely concerning which candidate is polling ahead, but also how certain issues are playing as well. Overall, OpenCongress is a great resource for serious political junkies.
Recent Comments