SOMEWHAT FRANK

AOL Named Top Site, myAOL Beta Released, Facebook a Fad?, Widgets Evolution and Formats, Tagging Tools, Blogging From Hobby To Fame and iPhone Hackers

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 to figure out site popularity putting AOL on top of the rankings and bumping Google down to 5th.

AOL Launches Three New myAOL Products In Beta
AOL launched a suite of personalized products into beta: myPage (personalized home page), Mgnet (image-driven content discovery and recommendation engine) and Favorites (feed reader and bookmarking). All three services can be accessed via tabs on the main myAOL page.

Facebook and the Working Adult: Fad or Revolution?
Web Worker Daily investigates whether or not Facebook in the working world is just a fad or here to stay.

The Tagging Toolbox: 30+ Tagging Tools
Tags - for some, one of the best ideas on the web, for others, merely a visual distraction. Mashable investigates a number of tagging options.

Google Adds Mapplets: Widgets for Google Maps
Google is unveiling what they’re calling “mapplets". Mapplets are essentially widgets for Google Maps which can integrate and manipulate Google with HTML, Javascript and Flash content.

The Evolution of Web Widgets: From Self-Expression to Media Companies
Read/Write Web takes a look at how web widgets have evolved from cool, viral toys of self-expression to important big media tools.

Basic web widget formats
Anyone publishing widget content online should know a few basic concepts shaping their decision and choose the right mix of software and content based on their target. Niall Kennedy covers some of the basic advantages, disadvantages, and considerations for each type of widget content and bring you up-to-speed on a few current widget deployment options.

Google: Viacom's Built to Sue
Google's CEO Eric Schmidt took a swipe at Viacom Friday, saying the company was "built from lawsuits" and pointed to its litigious history. Schmidt's comments were made to reporters at a hotel bar at the annual Allen & Co. meeting of media moguls.

iPhone Hackers: "we have owned the filesystem"
This could be problematic.

Perez Hilton gets show on VH1
The sharp-tongued celebrity gossip blogger has apparently been meeting with someone over at VH1. Another example of how blogging creates a platform to do just about everything.

Turning Blogging From Hobby to Career
Richard MacManus runs the world's 28th most popular blog, Read/WriteWeb, from his home office in Lower Hutt. It's every blogger's fantasy. Mr MacManus started a blog on web technology as a hobby back in 2003. Blogging can pay. Congrats Richard, keep up the great blogging!

Personalization: It's All About You

Pimping your ride, ripping your jeans, popping your collar and putting lime in your water are all expressions of your personality. Thus you are personalizing your experience. Your web experience can also be personalized making it your web. Personalization is all about you.

Jen Consalvo, Director of Personalization at AOL, recently spoke to a group at Web Content 2007 in Chicago, Illinois on June 19, 2007. Jen presented on how to create a personalized web and gave a sneak preview of the recently launched myAOL personalization suite. You can watch some video tidbits from the presentation above.

Mojits iPhone Web Widget Launcher

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 Chat, iPhone Digg, iPhone Twitter, TaDa List and many more.

Simply create a Mojits account, configure your Mojits to your liking and then navigate to the Mojits Launcher on your iPhone with Safari. My Mojits is shown below.

myAOL Personalization Suite Launches

Today myAOL, a personalization product suite, has officially been released to the beta. As the myAOL Product Manager, I feel like our team just gave birth to triplets, as myAOL offers up three applications into one integrated dashboard experience with various levels of personalization. We hope you like it.

I previewed myAOL a few weeks ago and now you can try it out for yourself. myAOL includes the following:

myAOL myPage is an Ajax, personalized homepage which offers applications and content to be your dashboard for the Web. It offers AOL content and applications (i.e. Truveo Video Search, AOL Mail, AOL Video, AOL Music, TMZ.com, etc.) in addition to 3rd party applications (i.e. eBay, Netflix, YouTube and many more coming soon). It offers a push down express widget tray, separate widget gallery, and drag and drop functionality to help make organizing your page a breeze. It also offers pre-configured, Ready-made pages which makes adding pages full of content easier (e.g. news, celebrity, technology). With partnerships with Google and Goowy Media, myAOL will offer an assortment of Google Gadgets and Goowy yourminis among other 3rd party widgets.

myAOL Mgnet (pronounced “Magnet”) is an innovative and fun, visual content discovery and recommendations engine. Mgnet offers a visual approach (using image clouds) to finding new content that you might be interested in on the Web.  By using both collaborative filtering and active inputs to provide Web recommendations to users Mgnet pulls in images and content (videos, articles, blogposts, podcasts, etc.) based on the user's likes and dislikes – users able to rate and save individual stories/feeds.  Mgnet leverages Truveo and Sphere for robust offering of Web content Mgnet also displays “What’s hot” which taps into the hot items in the myAOL suite. Some additional social aspects will be integrated soon to make it easy to share your recommendations with your buddies.

myAOL Favorites is a combination feed reader & bookmarking product with a built in feed mashup creator (making easy to create your own feed mashups!). Favorite's feed  reader offers a robust and easy to use feed reader for fast content updates from your favorite sites with shortcut keys and previous/next buttons make it easier to get through a lot of content quickly. Folders are setup for easy organization Integrated bookmarking and sharing features Import/Export feeds from other readers synched feeds via mobile. Bookmarks are integrated with the feed reader experience making saving your favorite items a one-click process while reading your favorite feeds. Finally, one of my favorite features of the suite is "Mix & Share" within Favorites which allows you easily create a mashup feed which also renders as a page. You simply just added your favorite feeds or bookmarks to a folder then click the green "Mix & Share" button to see you options which include creating a public feed and page which can then can be leveraged in a widget, shared via email, AIM or AIM Share. This really makes creating mashup feeds easy and understandable to someone that may not understand everything about XML, RSS or feeds.

The entire myAOL team (dev, design, product, ops, qa, etc) has worked hard developing this personalization product suite, with some  help from other groups at AOL and partners - thank you to all for the hard work and dedication. We hope you like the new myAOL and if you have any suggestions or feedback on something that you would like to see us add or change please let me know. Be sure to check out the myAOL Blog to stay updated on the latest happenings in the myAOL personalization suite.

iPhone Mania Turns To AT&T Activation Hell, Google Widget Payday, AOL News & CNN Redesign, Web 2.0 Tracking, A Tour of myAOL & French Web 2.0

Photo of the Week: I spotted this sole mushroom while visiting 'the country' in Illinois.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.01.07

iPhone Mania Turns To AT&T Activation Hell
The iPhone caused quite a stir and it appears Apple handled demands very well as it was almost too easy to get the iPhone in several locations. I was able to pick one up with no wait. However, since acquiring the iPhone I have yet to get it activated. It seems I am not the only one. Thus far it has taken over four hours, 2 phone calls to AT&T and one trip to an actual AT&T store. I am hoping tomorrow I will be able to get my iPhone activated but it will take at least one more call to AT&T support to help me transfer my number from my current service provider. Bummer. :-S

The French Web 2.0 Wave
France leads Europe in its enthusiasm for Web 2.0 startups, an industry that has doubled in size across the continent since 2005. Jerome Archambeaud examines the French market on GigaOm.

New CNN.com Goes Live - Google and Yahoo Both Search Providers
CNN re-launched its website as an enhanced multimedia site - packed with web 2.0 features such as recommendations and user generated content. In addition, CNN is using both Google and Yahoo for search.

Wimzi: AOL’s Answer to MeeboMe
AOL is widgetizing AIM with the new Wimzi widget: like other chat widgets, this lets you chat with your website visitors in real time.

Google offers seed funding for widget startups
Google is directly investing in small companies to expand the popularity of its iGoogle product. If this is not validation that widgets have real value then I don't know what is.

When You’ve Got To Go, Go To Mizpee.com
MizPee is a new service focused on delivering pertinent information regarding the location of nearby restrooms - cause when you gotta go you gotta go!

AOL launches new blog-like news site
AOL News launched its new design in a blog-like fashion, with excerpts of all the day's main stories laid out chronologically from top to bottom.

A tour of myAOL, a Personalized Aggregator
Jeremiah Owyang had us into PodTech to share the new myAOL with the PodTech team and live blogged it.

Keeping Tabs on Web 2.0
A great roundup of sites that are tracking Web 2.0 directory-style.

Blogging is Like Songwriting
Kent Newsome explains why blogging is like songwriting.

Robert Scoble & Fast Company magazine
Robert Scoble is now writing a column for Fast Company magazine and offers up his first column.

New myAOL Startpage Is Coming Soon

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 customizable homepage with drag and drop widgets to give quick click and go access to content and applications, myAOL also offers a few additional pages as part of the first time experience. The additional pages are called Mgnet (pronounced Magnet) and Favorites. myAOL Mgnet is an image driven content discovery and recommendations engine which offers a fun new way to find new videos, images and stories on the web. myAOL Favorites, recently highlighted by TechCrunch, offers feed reader integrated with a solid bookmarking product making it easy to manage and share all your favorite feed updates and places on the Web.

I am the product manager for myAOL and I just posted the video (shown above) on the new myAOL Blog. It provides a sneak peek at the product. Check out what Mike Arrington from TechCrunch has to say about the new myAOL.

Google Gears Up Offline, Portal Futures Analyzed, Startup Search, Mahalo & Particls Launch, Mashup Editors Compared & Userplane Rev Sharing

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.03.07

Internet Video vs DVRs Advertising & Measuring Online Video
Nielsens release of commercial data has led to quite a bit of discussion in the advertising industry about what counts as a commercial worth paying for. Mark Cuban weighs in.

The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter
David Sacks writes about web portals and where they are going.

Google Takes Desktop Feed Readers Head On
Google is announcing a new technology called Google Gears. The technology enables web applications to work both online and offline. One of the first applications of Google Gears that I have seen is its integration with Google Reader.

Startup Search: tracking the web startup ecosystem
Niall Kennedy unveiled a product he hinted at a few weeks ago while talking with him in SF. The new site tracks the startup ecosystem. It's a directory and analytics tool called Startup Search. Startup Search tracks Web startups, their products, key employees, investment firms, and investment partners. Startup Search also tracks the success of each product since it was first introduced to the world, using publicly available metrics pulled into a single page. It is a research tool, a discovery engine, and a fact-filled directory of the Web startup world.

Comparison of Yahoo Pipes to Microsoft's PopFly
Jay Neely compares Yahoo Pipes to Microsoft’s PopFly and also does an early analysis of Google’s Mashup Editor.

Userplane Launches Revenue Sharing Program
Web messaging services company Userplane has launched a new revenue-sharing program that brings monetization to online instant messaging and web chat.

Attention! Particls Launches Advanced Alerts Platform
Particls launched out of private beta this week. It serves as a proportioning alert filter that notifies the user via news ticker, pop-up alerts and mobile SMS messaging prioritized according to user needs. CEO Chris Saad calls it: "an attention management engine."

Jason Calacanis’ Human-Powered Search Mahalo Launches
Jason Calacanis’ ’Project X,’ Mahalo (meaning ‘thank you’ in Hawaii), has launched and it’s a human-powered search engine that’s to Google like what Citizendium is to Wikipedia.

Amp'd, another MVNO bites the dust
As a result of our rapid growth, Amp'd's back-end infrastructure was unable to keep up with customer demand. Amp'd has burned $360 million and is filing for bankruptcy.

Sketch your Dream House
Floorplanner take the best of Web 2.0 and bring it to home design. It is a wonderful application with professional tools and rich visual interface that allow users to sketch their own dream home and share their designs easily. Users are able to embed their designs on other sites or blogs.

Google Launches a Directions API
Google launched a Directions API that will allow third-party sites to offer directions directly on their site.

Rootly Relaunches: Design Much Improved

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 on about one thousand preselected sources plus sources added by users. As a number of users add the same source it gains trusted status and eventually enters the general index. Rootly offers some decent search result feeds as well as internal bookmarking. Additionally, Rootly has added the ability to accept OpenID. The site reminds me of the old version of Topix (minus images) before its recent relaunch.

According to Marshall, Rootly looks to continue to roll out new features which include OPML import - which has a whole lot of implications - and a customizable widget for personal startpages. One thing I would like to see though as they continue to improve is the addition of thumbnail images to each result.

Interestingly, Rootly sent me review request via ReviewMe several months ago and I had to decline. Back then, I just did not find it compelling enough to write about. The UI was terrible and it has some usability issues. I am happy to see Rootly has come a long way and offers a much improved its product.  It is just proof that if you create a compelling product experience  and people will talk about it.

 

Google Search Goes Universal, Microsoft Buys aQuantive, MyBlogLog Changes Coming, Enterprise RSS and TcDC1

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Brian Solis of a video camera recording Sarah Meyers interviewing someone at the May 2007 Girls in Tech in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 05.20.07

Watch TV Stations From Your Web Browser
More and more services are popping enabling users to watch full screen videos right from a web browser. They kind of all have a similar television look & feel. It even looks like some of them inspired by Joost style.

Google Launches Universal Search
Google announced yesterday its new search system intended to bring together all of Google’s broad assortment of searches into format that should be more convenient for users. Google’s vision is to ultimately search across all of googles content and to

Did Microsoft go lose it head over aQuantive?
Just how wacky was Microsoft’s $6 billion bid for aQuantive? GigaOm tries to illustrate it in this article.

Who Will Be America's First TechPresident?
This challenge to all candidates was made on the TechPresident site earlier this week.

Windows Live Gallery partners program
Companies and brands may partner with Microsoft to highlight their Windows Live Gadget offerings for preferred inclusion in the Live.com personal homepage, Windows Live Spaces sidebar, and the Windows Vista sidebar.

TECH cocktail Takes On the Capitol City
Bub.blicio.us reports on the night that was a TECH cocktail in DC.

Google's Defensible Trump Card?
Google is betting the farm on personalization.

Feed Crier climbs into bed with IMified
By becoming part of IMified, Feed Crier will be able to offer more features to our users. Maybe reblogging alerts directly to your blog from your IM client. Or subscribing to alerts from sources other than feeds (think Google Calendar, To Do list reminder, etc.).

Enterprise RSS - 3 Major Vendors Show The Way
Forrester has just released a new report on Enterprise RSS. Specifically it tackles the issue of information overload in the corporate environment, now that RSS feeds are an important source of information in the workplace.

MyBlogLog to Rebrand and Make Significant Changes
MyBloglog is really only known amongst the first adoptors and blogosphere but it appears Yahoo will soon be positioning it for the mainstream.

Photobucket Sale, Facebook Classifieds, The Great Digg Revolt, iGoogle Communities & Last.fm Video Launched

Photo of the Week: While in Santa Monica, California this week for Twiistup I decided to get up early on Wednesday to go down to the beach and snap this shot.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits 05.13.07

Facebook to Launch Classifieds Service
Social network Facebook is set to launch a classified service to its users on Friday, according to the New York Times. The service will launch under the name 'Facebook Marketplace.' Makes sense, they are fishing where the fish are.

Are Search Engine Rankings are Dead?
With the advent of personalization and impending changes with the interface of search results, the notion of ranking seems to be on it’s way out. Lee Odden takes a closer look.

You're a Nobody Unless Your Name Googles Well
In the age of Google, being special increasingly requires standing out from the crowd online. Many people aspire for themselves -- or their offspring -- to command prominent placement in the top few links on search engines or social networking searches.

iGoogle Community Modules
Want to put a little piece of yourself on your friends' and family's homepages? The iGoogle team seems to launch little updates every other week but this one caught my eye. it’s a new category called “my community." With cookie-cutter templates you can create your own modules. Creating and sharing these Google Gadgets is as easy as filling out a simple form.

Last.fm Launches Video - Aims To Be The MTV Of Web 2.0 Age
Online radio station Last.fm is adding a video section to its site this week, enabling users to create their own personalized video channels - similar to how users can already create radio stations based on their music tastes.

RSS Feeds for Tags at Amazon.com
The new functionality has been soft-launched and isn’t currently available on all Amazon pages. Support will become available across the board in the coming weeks. Woohoo!

MySpace/Photobucket: User Overlap Is Nearly 100%
NewsCorp plans to pay half as much for Photobucket as they did for MySpace. Photobucket is going for $300 million, and MySpace was acquired for $580 million, back in 2005. Interesting analysis by Mr. Arrington.

What Happened at Digg?
The firestorm that erupted at Digg earlier this week over a censored post has led to a lot of discussion about the nature of censorship in a world where everyone is a publisher. Some are calling it the "The Great Digg Revolt,"  as it illustrates just how much power the web 2.0 movement has given to its users.

Gmail Users are Younger & Richer?
The latest stats show that Gmail users skew younger and richer than other mail products. I guess I am old and poor cause I don't use Gmail.

Five Twitter Tools We Love
Getting sick of Twitter? Maybe these five add-ons may help convince you to the service for a bit longer.

LinkedIn lets you see who is viewing your profile — sort of
LinkedIn has created a new feature that lets you see who is viewing your profile. So now you can find out who is stalking looking for you in the business world.

What is your favorite web tech conference in 2007 so far?
Don't forget to vote for a conference you enjoyed the most so far this year!

Microsoft Buying Yahoo?, Goodbye Yahoo Photos, YouTube RevShare, Small the New Big, Conference Success & Twittering

Photo of the Week: This was the view from Sweet View on Derby Day at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 05.06.07

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo? Nope.
Stung by the loss of Internet advertising firm DoubleClick to Google last month, Microsoft has intensified its pursuit of a deal with Yahoo!, asking the company to re-enter formal negotiations, The Post has learned. Opps, false alarm.

Breaking: Yahoo To Shut Down Yahoo Photos In Favor Of Flickr
The Yahoo Photos service will be shut down in favor of the newer and more social Flickr, which they acquired in March of 2005. Peanut butter clean-up?

YouTube Makes Some Members Content Partners
Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content and share the revenue with the content producer.

Small is The New Big
Now that Web 2.0 is growing up, scale no longer matters. GigaOm explains how even tiny businesses—like transcription services—can go global.

eBay widgets
What a fantastic and easy way to promote your auctions or Ebay fund raisers on your blog! The set-up for this widget is very simple to figure out. There are no technical hurdles for newbies to worry about.

The (Re)Birth of Mobile Banking
While the upcoming iPhone launch is capturing the lion’s share of attention in the Wireless industry, the re-introduction of Mobile Banking has been at the core of a movement to make a cell phone your next wallet.

Calacanis’ latest, Project X, Kokua?
Jason Calacanis, co-founder of Weblogs Inc., and now an entrepreneur-in-action at Sequoia Capital is working on a new company called, Project X. Valleywag published some details about the company earlier this week, that has the apparent backing of Mark Cuban. I am hoping Mark also buys the Chicago Cubs at seasons end.

Most Profitable Web 2.0 Business: Conferences
The tech conference business continues to amaze me. They are true champion revenue generators of the web 2.0 area.

Rebrand & New Features: Google IG To Relaunch as iGoogle
Google’s personalized home page, Google IG, has been rebranded as iGoogle and launched at igoogle.com.

Twittering more than blogging
I sent 1,327 text messages last month, many of which were related to twitter so I have to say that I did not write anywhere near 1,327 blog posts in the same time. Marshall Kirkpatrick explains how he is has been twittering a lot more than blogging as well.

Google Talks Personalization, Tech Is On Fire, Newsvine Relaunches, Ajax Offline, Filter Automates Playlists & Digg API Fun

Photo of the Week: Keyboard infestation could happen to anyone of us. Thanks to bhollar for capturing the moment on film.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.29.07

Newsvine Relaunches... Announcing Evergreen
Mike Davidson proudly announced the first major overhaul of Newsvine since launching a little more than a year ago. It is now a personalized news page that you can customize to your liking.

The Tech Industry Is On Fire
Nick O'Neill explains how tech companies are banking these days, as one company after another have come out with record breaking profits.

Q&A With Google Personalization Gurus Sep Kamvar & Marissa Mayer
Search Engine Land offers up some interesting Q&A about personalization at Google.

Podcast: Taking Ajax offline
Offline web applications are a hot topic, but often misunderstood. Dojo offers an offline toolkit among others...this podcast talks through these developments.

Warm Up To a Protected Advertising Climate
FeedBurner announced AdClimate, a new feature of the formidable FeedBurner ad server for blogs and RSS feeds. AdClimate gives marketers and advertisers the power to suppress their ads from being served into content they might deem questionable.

Firefox Extension: Smart Digg Button
The Smart Digg Button extension for Firefox places a button in your status bar. It uses the newly released Digg API to determine if the web page you are currently viewing has been submitted to Digg.

(Text) Size is Everything When It Comes To Startpages
Kent Newsome give some interesting perspective on the problems he sees with text size controls on personalized startpage products. He believes these applications need to give users a way to permanently set the text size, preferably at the module level. He understands that you can change text size at the browser level, but that makes every other page look too big.

GreenDimes Reduces Snail Mail Spam
Everyone hates junk mail. Even though you tend to get more male enhancement solicitings in your spam email, real junk mail is actually harmful to the environment and keeps your counter-tops wonderfully messy. To keep it out of your mailbox, GreenDimes ($36 per year) will help reduce the amount if snail mail spam that comes your way.

DoMyStuff.com - Find People to Complete Your Chores
DoMyStuff.com is the solution to all of the chores you need to get done, but can never seem to find the time to do them. You post what you need to get done, and others post bids on how much they’re willing to do the job for.

Adobe Takes Flex Open Source
Adobe Systems announced this week that they will be open sourcing their Adobe Flex framework so developers can access their source code to enhance its ability to create Rich Internet applications.

The Filter Automates Playlists
606Tech examines The Filter, a service that automatically creates playlists for you to put on your computer, iPod or Nokia mobile phone. This recommendation system works similar to Pandora, FineTune and MyStrands.

StumbleUpon & Hitwise Acquired, Netvibes Universe Launches, Web 2.0 Expo Wrap-up, AOL India & Education 2.0

Photo of the Week: I snapped this photo of the West Wing while celebrating Earth Day 2007 on the White House grounds.

eBay Acquires StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay for between $40 to $75 million but it seems Google Google tried to rain on their parade with a toolbar update.

Hitwise Acquired by Experian for $240 Million
All of those great charts that Hitwise so freely provide us, have paid off big time for the web intelligence company. Information services provider Experian has announced their cash purchase of Hitwise for $240 million.

Netvibes Launches Universe: Customized Public Pages
Netvibes launched Universe, allowing users to create highly customized versions of Netvibes and publish them for public access. Netvibes has created 100 or so branded versions for the launch - users will be able to create these soon. Netvibes hosted a huge launch party this past Monday in San Francisco.

What Every Video Aggregator Site Needs
Here are a few things that every Video Aggregator website needs in order to stay afloat in this ever-crowding market.

AOL Launching Next Week In India
AOL President and COO Ron Grant is going to be in India next week for the launch of AOL’s India portal.

Google Feed API
Google Reader finally has its first official API. Any developer in the world can request the entire history of a web feed from Google's geo-distributed server cloud in a normalized response for inclusion in their websites or products.

Web 2.0 Expo: All Things Widgets
The Web 2.0 Expo included two sessions on widgets. Also, offline web apps could be the next big thing after seeing an Apollo demo, by Kevin Lynch of Adobe.

Web 2.0 takes On Colleges And Universities: Education 2.0
In the shift from an intellectual economy of push, to one of pull, the evolving participatory media are making their impact felt . It is no longer enough to pump out information like gasoline and expect authentic learning to take place - the new generation.

Google Acquires DoubleClick, 10 Hot Startups, Social Aggregators, FoundRead Born & Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us

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 just arrived in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It should be an exciting week of sessions, demos and launch parties in the city by the bay. If you are in town and want to meetup tonight (Sunday) check out this little meetup but keep in mind, this is NOT a TECH cocktail event like the one we just hosted in Chicago - it is just a meetup in SF.

Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
Makes sense as Google is truly an advertising company. Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. That is a lot of cash. Rumor has it they are buying the Internet just after the 2016 Chicago Olympics. :-) 

Birth of the Social Aggregator
Social Networks, Blogs and Startpages have long been treated as separate categories of web-based applications. According to Widgify, it is about to change. 

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups To Date
Rev2.org lists its take on the most successful web 2.0 startups. With FeedBurner’s domination of the feed management space I would probably add them to this list. But you probably know already I am a FeedBurner fan.

New RSS 2.0 spec site deployed
Dave Winer has been working on a project to "future-safe" the Harvard site that houses the RSS 2.0 spec. Yesterday, he redirected from the old site to the new one. Congrats Dave on the new site! 

Search for People Across the Social Network Sites
yoName is a search engine that allows you to search friends (not just) on these 6 big networks. 

Introducing FoundRead
GigaPapi GigaOm is at it again as he has launched FoundRead, a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Great idea Om, congrats on the launch. 

Hot Startup Checklist: Spam A Lot?
An interesting chart of Valleywag (masters of the pie charts, graphs, slides, etc.) highlighting some of the most promising startups.

Office 2.0, Mobile RSS, SplashCast, Yahoo Widgets & Netvibes Updated, New TechCrunch CEO & Web Launch Strategy

Photo of the Week: The trees are blooming faster than web 2.0 startups these days. I snapped this photo, titled Flowering with my camera phone, while at the AOL Mountain View, California office this past week.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.25.07

Under the Radar Office 2.0 Winners
I had a chance to drop into the Under the Radar Office 2.0 event at Microsoft's Mountain View, California office on Friday (March 23, 2007) that showcased a number of startups in various business related software categories. This article announces the top picks in each category.

SplashCast: Channel Yourself Across the Web
SplashCast, my favorite video player widget, has made some changes which make it easier to place videos to be syndicated via RSS, in an embedded player and a number of others.

How To Market Your Web App
Read/Write Web examines the horrible peak-then-slump scenario the is common in the web 2.0 era and often happens after Digg, TechCrunch, Read/Write Web, Somewhat Frank or other popular blogs spotlight a site.

Newspapers are dead...
Robert Scoble explains why newspapers are dead. I don't feel that newspapers are totally dead, as The Washington Post and a few other newspaper-based companies have been quick to adapt to the changes in the media landscape. However, the rest of pack had better realize that they need to change NOW.

Welcome To TechCrunch, Heather
TechCrunch and the Crunch Network has hired its first CEO by luring Heather Harde away from Fox Interactive Media to join the team. I had a chance to hang out with Mike Arrington this past week and he was pretty happy to have Heather on board.

SideStep and EveryClick Team Travel Searches, Charity Donations
SideStep.com just announced a partnership with EveryClick.com, a UK based search engine with social responsibility, giving 50% of gross revenues to charities. It reminds me of GoodSearch - BRAVO!

Yahoo! Launches Widgets 4.0
Yahoo! relaunched its previously named Yahoo Widget Engine with a faster, lighter, and sleeker 4.0 version.

Netvibes Launches New Version
Netvibes, the personalized homepage product, officially released its new version called the "Coriander Edition". 

Looking back at three years of Web 2.0 investing
Jeff Clavier, an established entrepreneur, offers up a glance of his impressive portfolio publicly for the first time. Thanks Jeff!

RSS on the Go: A look at Web-Based Mobile Aggregators
Want to read your feeds on the go? There are a few choices for those of us who want the same feeds accessible in both big and small formats at the same time, without requiring the download of a dedicated application on any platform. AOL also offers a mobile feed reader that was not mentioned but is an easy way to check some feeds on the go as well.

Weaving The Web To Your Taste
Hossein Eslambolchi's service will scour the web for the media you want and feeds you recommended items.

Basecamp, activeCollab, and Goplan compared
With the mention of the Goplan launch last week, I think it is appropriate to now point out this solid comparison of its competitors.

Fresh Reader - Pushing the Feed
Profy reports on a new RSS feed reader called Fresh Reader a Web based, server type RSS feed reader that runs exceptionally fast. Fresh Reader is designed for either personal or corporate use, and allows for social bookmarking, mobile support, Intranet use and many other features.

Top 40+ FeedBurner sites aggregated
Frantic Industries has manually aggregated a list of the top 40-plus sites based on FeedBurner subscriber metrics.