March 26, 2008
Is email broken? I have been struggling to manage email for a long time as I attempted to liberate my inbox back in 2005 only to once again stare email bankruptcy in the eyes. Email is such a double-edged sword since I need email to communicate but get so much of it becomes difficult to use effectively. I am not alone, I have heard the same things from a number of colleagues and recently TechCrunch editor and founder Mike Arrington even called the communication crisis produced by email a opportunity for an entrepreneur.
I recently met Jared Goralnick who is a bit of a productivity guru. Jared joined me on quick SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode number 17 (below). He recently founded AwayFind.com. AwayFind, a DC-based startup, looking to help ease some of the email burden so you can focus on your day-to-day tasks without constant interruptions. With AwayFind, which is currently in private beta, users can setup a page (like this one I created) to include in auto-response messages to anyone that emails them. The auto-response offers a little explanation as to when you might get to the mail and a form which can contact the user directly via SMS text messaging and email if the item being sent was an emergency or needs to be handled immediately.
Watch the latest SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode with Jared Goralnick now.
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January 27, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending January 27, 2008.
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December 22, 2007
The video I decided to highlight this week happens to showcase a friend of mine, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington as he appeared on the San Francisco Bay area local Fox affiliate discussing being named one of the Forbes top 25 web celebs. Also notables include Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Jason Calacanis and "Giga" Om Malik.
Congrats to everyone mentioned and everyone on the list that keeps the blogosphere flowing like a river. However, Forbes seems to have forgotten to give some love to more than a few excellent bloggers but most notably "Somewhat" Frank Gruber. But just like the Chicago Cubs' baseball season, I guess there is always next year. :)
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December 9, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending December 9, 2007.
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September 22, 2007
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, sat down with TechCrunch c0-editor Mike Arrington at the TechCrunch40 conference for a fireside chat. Mark takes about opening up the Facebook platform and announced the FBFUND is a $10 million grant fund from Facebook aimed at helping application developers. The grants range from $25K to $250K and Facebook takes no equity or debt.
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July 29, 2007
Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Brian Solis of bub.blicio.us at the TechCrunch event in Menlo Park, California on Friday evening (Suits Suck tee shirt photo explained in first story below). Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.29.07 TechCrunch 9 & A Funny "Suit"? I was in attendance for...
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July 5, 2007
TechCrunch20, the TechCrunch conference coming up in September, is offering a platform for newly launching companies to present for free in front of an audience of hundreds of press, bloggers venture capitalists and entrepreneurs and potentially win a $50,000 prize. TechCrunch has been assembling an impressive and assorted list of...
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June 19, 2007
So you want to organize all your stuff on the web in one place? A new myAOL is coming soon. The current myAOL is solely a feed reader that offers some recommendations. The new myAOL offers a personalized homepage experience with some additional bells and whistles. Aside from an Ajax...
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June 6, 2007
I have been driving the same ole' four door sedan for awhile now and it is just about time for a change. I am definitely due for a new ride. Something a little more fun to drive would make my hour plus commute a little more enjoyable. So the question...
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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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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 23, 2007
Twitter has been the talk of the blogosphere and tech community for the last few weeks. Twitter has taken a simple idea and technology to create an easy to use and somewhat addictive product thus turning it into a growing phenomenon. I finally gave in and reviewed Twitter two weeks...
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March 4, 2007
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:...
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February 4, 2007
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!...
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February 3, 2007
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....
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January 14, 2007
Daylife, a New York-based news aggregator with personalization hooks, launched a few weeks ago to offer users another way to ingest the daily news. It brings a new fresh look to a news site. Daylife is backed by many, including bloggers Jeff Jarvis and Michael Arrington but they are not...
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January 6, 2007
Photo Attribution: grayedMatter Congratulations to TechCrunch as it was named Best Web 2.0 Blog in the 2nd Annual Search Engine Journal Awards. TechCrunch is the benchmark for web 2.0 blogging. As all bloggers know, it is not easy to keep fresh, solid content flowing day in and day out, 24/7/365...
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December 30, 2006
So you probably have seen by now the slew of articles that start out "What superhero are you?", "What superhero am I?" or "I am December 16, 2006
Eric Olson, TECH cocktail co-founder and friend, and online marketing guru Lee Odden both tagged me recently to participate in a holiday version of blog tag. According to Lee's post: "Jeff Pulver started things off with this Holiday version of Blog Tag and this is the way it works: Once...
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November 18, 2006
TechCrunch 8, an event celebrating the web 2.0 movement, took its show on the road to New York City this past week (November 16, 2006) and I traveled to be in attendance. AOL supported the event by being one of the many sponsors. AOL also had space at the event...
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November 8, 2006
Like.com, a product created by Riya, launched today (November 8, 2006) to offer what appears to be the first visual image recognition search engine in a consumer facing application. The site offers the ability to search by photos to identify similar items. Like.com applies this functionality to shopping to help...
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November 8, 2006
MyBlogLog recently launched enables bloggers to create a community around their blog by putting a social networking spin on site metrics. Like many site metrics packages MyBlogLog tracks web site traffic, however MyBlogLog also identifies and displays when other registered MyBlogLog users visit another registered MyBlogLog site. In a similar...
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November 4, 2006
You want a raise, right? You think: “Just [fill in the blank] dollars more and I could finally get that [fill in the blank]." Yeah, me too… But sometimes we all just need a little perspective – a reality check to reminds us of how fortunate we are in comparison...
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October 27, 2006
Joseph Morgenstan once said, "Children are gleeful barbarians." So how do parents handle "gleeful barbarians?" Parenting is not an easy task but parents are no longer alone. With the web 2.0 movement there have been a number of parenting sites that have been introduced to help unite parents to do...
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October 4, 2006
Widgets have become a hot topic in the web community lately as a large number of sites are allowing users to personalize their experience. The term widget can be used interchangeably with gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake but for the sake of simplicity I will use the...
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September 24, 2006
A meeting of the blogger minds has been unleashed on TalkCrunch today (September 24, 2006). The podcast, which is part of the CrunchNetwork, brings together Om Malik, Robert Scoble and Mike Arrington to discuss a number of topics ranging from the state of voice over IP (VoIP) to their favorite...
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September 13, 2006
TechCrunch, the popular technology blog created by Mike Arrington which I have had the pleasure of occasionally contributing to, allowed FeedBurner, the feed management powerhouse, to dissect its feed metrics publicly with this recent article by Traci Hailpern. I found the entire article extremely interesting as it gives in-depth answers...
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September 9, 2006
TalkCrunch the podcast which is part of the Mike "Captain Crunch" Arrington powered CrunchNetwork, is back!!! TalkCrunch has released a new podcast in which host Mike Arrington interviews Elliot Noss. They discuss Tucows and ths purchase of the Ajax calendar of Kiko via eBay. Yes they bought Kiko on eBay...
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