April 20, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending April 20, 2008.
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April 16, 2008
With the popularity of text messaging and the rise of Twitter via mobile there is a growing trend for find me/follow me mobile applications. FindWhere, a Sterling, Virginia based company, has just launched an application called Livecontacts to help you find and keep track of your buddies. Users can now share their location and track their friends’ locations for free. Livecontacts is taking the same approach that craigslist took to democratize the online classified advertising space by offering users what is traditionally a paid geographic data service for free.
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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 7, 2008
As a member of the frequent flyer club, I have used TripIt and previously reviewed when it first launched. Now TripIt has made traveling easier by adding some additional mobile support for users on the go with the TripIt Mobile release. With TripIt Mobile users can access what they need to know from their mobile phones including flight changes, and in my case cancellations, hotel addresses and phone numbers, and auto rental info. By adding additional integration components for your TripIt account, even restaurant reservations can be accessed.
Making TripIts applications available on mobile devices makes a lot sense since when you are traveling you are most likely cannot as easily get on your computer. TripIt offers applications to enable staying in touch with others in your social network, allowing you to schedule appointments if in the same area or at the same event. In checking out the mobile experience I snapped the photo shown here can be visited on your mobile device at: m.tripit.com.
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April 4, 2008
If you are on the go or in lots of meetings (like I find myself) you might want to get your voice mail converted to text message or email. YouMail, an Aliso Viejo, California based startup has just added this feature to its private beta which already is a feature rich mobile voice mail solution which offers personalized voice mails based on caller ID, smart greetings and the ability to manage voice mails over the Web.
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March 30, 2008
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 30, 2008.
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March 29, 2008
The adoption of Twitter, which I covered previously a number of times , appears to be acceleratingly since March 6th, as I have seen my followers double in that three week period. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk recently started to do a daily "thoughts on life" video podcast and gave his thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook...kinda. So in response to his video I wanted to make a quick SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode 18 with my thoughts on Twitter (mainly) as well as a few comments about Facebook.
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March 24, 2008
Getting to your personal while away has now gotten a lot easier thanks to the San Diego based startup ajax 13 creators of ajaxWindows.ajaxWindows enables users to access their computer desktop just as if they were on it via a web browser from anywhere and event on a mobile device. Simply create an account and ajaxWindows syncs with your desktop and creates a duplicate online version. You can then access it from anywhere while on the go.
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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 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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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
Twitter is a great communication tool. I use it all the time. I initially enabled mobile notifications but found I was getting a constant stream of Twitter text messages which can be somewhat distracting. So I turned off mobile notifications except for direct messages. But I still find that I miss "@ replies" since they cannot currently be sent to my mobile device.
I just put in a feature request to Twitter. I would love to be able to get "@ replies" sent directly to my mobile device just the same as direct messages are. Anyone else want to see this feature added?
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February 22, 2008
Eyespot, the online video editing site that I previously reviewed with very high marks, has released a new set of tools to make personalization and syndication of videos. The tools include the ability to share to a mobile device or to a number of other video platforms with just one click.
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February 16, 2008
Have you ever taken a photo or seen a video and wanted to immediately share it with your friends while on the go? Obviously you could upload it to Flickr or Facebook or a number of other sites but more than likely times you probably would fire off an email to your friends to share it with them. Your friends would then get your message at various times depending upon when they actually go to check their email which means you are not instantly communicating with your friends.
Movial is looking to help make sharing easier with the recent launch of Movial Social Communicator. Social Communicator offers a desktop client and mobile application that syncs all your mobile phone contacts and empowers users to send videos, photos and news directly to their friends at their current location.
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February 6, 2008
BlogTV, the personalized TV platform which I use for streaming live split-screen video interviews, has just made it possible to watch all those videos from your mobile phone while on the go. Now with BlogTV offers all its live streams for free, without any installation of software for all major mobile carriers. But they are still waiting on the iPhone to be able to play these types of videos.
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January 29, 2008
After an evening mixer last night which helped to get everyone together DEMO08, as its name implies, was filled with lots of demos. Rather than review every single company that launched a product today I will give you a brief overview of each one. Overall, I was impressed by a couple of pen-like gadgets, a few enabling technology sites, a couple video sites and of course mobile products.
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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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January 23, 2008
Playyoo, a social networking platform for creating and sharing mobile casual games, officially opens its beta doors to the public today. Described by TechCrunch as the "YouTube For Mobile Games," Playyoo (www.playyoo.com or m.playyoo.com on mobile phones) allows anyone to create and submit mobile games to its network. Users can create, share and discover new mobile experiences all via Playyoo.
Playyoo, a privately held company based in London, England, offers game developers a place to create and distribute Adobe Flash Lite mobile games. But you don't have to be a seasoned game developer to create a Playyoo game as it offers integrated game creator tools to enable anyone to develop and publish a mobile game creation.
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January 15, 2008
Are you ever on the go and in need of answer? I often find myself in need of an answer the minute I step away from the computer and therefore cannot look it up. While having an iPhone has often remedied the problem, AskMeNow may be another possible solution. AskMeNow, an Irvine, California-based startup, is a mobile service for anyone looking for answers while on the go.
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January 9, 2008
Music makes the world go round. OUTSHOUTS, a Palo Alto, California based three employee startup, takes music going 'round seriously as it enables anyone to create and send their own mixes of music over email and text message directly to your mobile phone. OUTSHOUTS lets anyone become DJ to mix music tracks with your recorded voice and pre-recorded music or other content.
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January 7, 2008
Lifestreaming has made great strides in the past year as Justin.TV strapped a camera on his head. Robert Scoble, Sarah Meyers and a number of others including myself have participated in one way or another in the lifestreaming video movement leveraging tools like UStream.TV, Mogulus and Blog.TV.
With CES taking place in Las Vegas this week and the unfortunate fact that I was unable to attend (due to my day job) I am going to take full advantage of my friends lifestreaming videos to get the feel of the conference. There is a new tool called Qik that might make lifestreaming even easier than before. Qik is an alpha product that has sprung onto the scene to enable users to stream live video directly from their mobile phone.
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December 4, 2007
Ever been in public when nature calls and you have no idea where to go? We all have been there at some point and have scrambled to find a restroom. MizPee, a creation of Yojo Mobile, launched this past summer to try to alleviate the issue by empowering people to contribute and find toilets nearby. MizPee has been busy the past six months and will soon be launching some upgrades with MizPee 2.0.
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December 2, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending December 1, 2007.
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November 17, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Video: Android, Google's open source mobile platform, was announced last week to enable developers to easily create mobile applications. Android will make development for mobile applications for different handsets easier. With over 30 carriers and manufactures on board with Google's Android Platform, new applications should probably start rolling out early in 2008. Creating an Android application is supposed to be easy so I tried to find out how by scouring the Web for some examples. I found an interesting "how to" video included in this article.
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October 22, 2007
If you are a business traveler you know what it is like to have to come back and remember every expense you made on your trip. Credit card bills offer a pretty good start but they do not always tell you the entire story as most companies require you to submit details about each expense. For example, listing who was at a company dinner, where you took a taxi to and from and why. All these travel notes are sometimes tough to keep track of but Xpenser is here to help.
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October 15, 2007
I spent the day at the 2007 Widget Summit today as I spoke on a session about Personalized Homepages. The day was filled with some excellent session about, as you might guess widgets of all ways, shapes and forms. Widget Summit closed day one with a launching pad.
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October 12, 2007
Lypp, a Canadian-based mobile startup, launched recently to offer Blackberry users (and soon other devices) a way to bypass long distance charges in Canada and the US. With Lypp calls are initiated using Instant Messaging but work with your existing phone number.
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September 17, 2007
TechCrunch40, the 2007 TechCrunch launching pad conference, is upon us and you can keep up with the event just updated techcrunch40.com website. The site offers fully-featured hub for TechCrunch40, which starts this morning and continues through Tuesday evening. It will offer details about the 40 presenting companies (as they launch), the 100 demo pit companies and speaker details. The site will upload video clips of each set of presentations. The site also has Flickr photos can view photos of the conference and messages about the event via Twitter.
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September 11, 2007
Typepad, the popular hosted blog platform by SixApart, has announced a new iPhone optimized interface. Typepad users can now visit http://i.typepad.com on an iPhone or the new iPod Touch in their Safari Web browser use an optimized version of Typepad.
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September 11, 2007
Looking for a reaction from a tee shirt? Reactee offers the ability to create customized tee shirts that might just get the reaction you are looking for via SMS text message. Reactee, a project of TextMarks, allows a user to setup a keyword to text to 41411. By simply sending a specified keyword to 41411 you will receive a response text message created by the tee shirt creator.
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September 4, 2007
Geezeo, a Framingham, Massachusetts based startup, offers a free online social personal finance application that makes it easy to keep track of your money from anywhere. With Geezeo you can simply aggregate all your accounts into one place and check account balances online or with your mobile phone.
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September 3, 2007
If you are looking for a way to cut corners when it comes to updating your online status you might want to give twitterfeed.com a try. Twitterfeed.com turns twitter into a status feed aggregator as you can pull all your status updates into one place and then publish them all to twitter.
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September 2, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending September 2, 2007.
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August 29, 2007
Text2Store, a Chicago-based startup, leverages text messaging to send deals and coupons directly to your cellphone. Text2Store recently launched local deals widget that shares the revenue of each click-through. Similar to other advertising and affiliate programs, anytime you help someone save money with a coupon text message accessed from your site, Text2Store will pay you 25% of the negotiated income with the advertiser.
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July 11, 2007
If you have an iPhone you may be trying to figure out a way to optimize your widget experience. Mojits offers a potential solution as it provides a place to find web widgets optimized for the iPhone. Currently, Mojits offers a couple dozen web widget options which include AIM iPhone...
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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 19, 2007
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...
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March 5, 2007
Is your site mobile ready? .mobi has launched, ready .mobi, a mobile-readiness test to help site owners. You simply put in your URL and using industry best practices & standards you find out if the site is mobile ready. Unfortunately, Somewhat Frank is not currently fully mobile ready. You can...
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February 25, 2007
Photo of the week: With the 79th Academy Awards tonight I felt this photo title Over Hollywood Sign by Jorge Mir offered a good point of perspective. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.25.07 Hollywood Disrupted By Social Media? An opinion piece in the LA Times, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”,...
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February 18, 2007
Photo of the week: Create a 2 gigabyte ChapStick as explained by The Machinist. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.18.07 Patent Monkey: Yahoo Ready to Smash Up the Mash Ups Yahoo was recently granted a patent that could cause a bit of a shake-up to other web portal companies if acted...
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January 12, 2007
The Macworld was energized earlier this week as Steve Jobs introduced the long anticipated Apple iPhone. In case you missed it the phone is going to bring multimedia to the masses with a sleek new design as shown in this video. However, one detail that might be a problem for...
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January 10, 2007
Groovr recently launched a social network built around the connectivity of a mobile phone, mainly text and photo messaging. Groovr aims to act as a communication mechanism for people interested in constantly updating their friends or contacts with their whereabouts. Groovr also offers other social networking hooks which include the...
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December 10, 2006
Have you ever seen something in a store or while reading a magazine that you want to remember so you take a photo of it with your cellphone camera? Mobot is a startup that plans to leverage this type of mobile phone behavior to offer an innovative service. Mobot is...
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September 29, 2006
MapQuest, the dinosaur of a now crowded field of online mapping services, has finally launched draggable maps. I wrote a map comparison review for TechCrunch in April 2006 and MapQuest did not fair very well in the navigational feature comparison. Draggable maps should at least put MapQuest back on 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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August 15, 2006
Sam Sebastian, director of Classifieds & Local at Google, spoke at a lunch engagement today (August 15, 2006) at his former employer Classified Ventures in Chicago, Illinois. Sam heads a sales team that focuses on developing working relationships with real estate companies and other local advertisers to advocate the use...
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