August 5, 2008
The Strands, a recommendations company with offices in Virginia, has put a little $100,000 prize to the best recommendation startup. What does that mean? The Strands seek to identify the best early stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project. The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands. Winners will be awarded at the upcoming ACM Recommender Systems Conference in Switzerland.
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July 29, 2008
I was on the road last week and weekend for TECH cocktail Boston 2 so down time and internet access were sparse so I did not get a chance to wish myAOL, the personalized startpage product I moved to the east coast to work on for AOL, a proper one year birthday.
Happy birthday myAOL - my oh my, you are looking good at one!
I must first note, I am no longer part of the myAOL team as I have been reassigned to the People Network which includes Bebo, AIM, ICQ, Yedda and Goowy. But I wanted to take a moment to check in with the lovable startpage product that I spent over a year and half working on to see just how it has evolved since launching myAOL in July 2007.
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June 20, 2008
SocialThing, a Boulder, Colorado TechStars startup that aggregates all your online social updates into one slick lifestream, launched into private beta this past March in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive event. I got a chance to get a preview of the product the week before as SocialThing showed off its stuff at TECH cocktail Boulder. I was impressed and have been using it online and via the iPhone version ever since.
Just a few weeks ago, SocialThing rolled out version 2.0 of the product. The previous version was pretty but version 2.0 looks even better than before. It offers users more control of the presentation via the settings. For example users can now sort by friends or by time. Users can also allow others to link directly to a public profile with controls on what appears in the feed. SocialThing has reworked the way they retrieve updates from all your favorite services so that updates are not pulled back in a constant flow but are batched. This allows SocialThing to indicate when there are additional updates that you might want to refresh your page to receive. Additionally, they have rolled out a new iPhone application that allows for on-the-go posting of status and trolling of your lifestream. It is pretty slick.
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June 3, 2008
Filtrbox, a Boulder-based startup which was founded about a year ago as part of the first TechStars program, will soon be launching a self-service business-grade keyword driven alerts product. Filtrbox offers keyword driven media search which includes the blogosphere & mainstream news.
I was intrigued by the five person filtrbox team when they demoed at TECH cocktail Boulder back in March 2008. I recently got a more thoroughly overview of the private beta product as they approach a public beta launch and I wanted to share my thoughts on the product.
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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 4, 2008
FeedHub, the Pittsburgh-based startup created by mSpoke, has just announced an update aimed at improving the relevancy of its personalized feed creator. I covered FeedHub when they launched back in September 2007, since then they have received a lot of user feedback which they used to plan and execute on this latest update.
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January 31, 2008
myAOL, the personalized startpage suite, has added a little more personal flair to its offering by launching the ability to select themes or skins for each page or tab on your personal dashboard. Now in addition to changing the background color users can select from one of six themes.
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January 24, 2008
Ask.com rolled out Ask 3D search in June 2006 and I was pleased by its simple, beautiful design which enables users to select from a couple of skins or backgrounds for the search experience. Ask has just enhanced the feature to offer users the ability to create their own skins for the Ask 3D experience. Users can now simply add there own skins to customize the Ask search background to any photo that they like. It takes about a minute or less to do and is actually quite fun.
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January 21, 2008
Magnify.net, a New York-based startup previously covered on Somewhat Frank, recently unveiled the ability for any member of the community to create, share, and use design elements that have been "open-sourced" by other members of the community. For example, more complex template sets that use custom color themes, graphic backgrounds, icons, and CSS can now be used as a starting point and re-mixed by other community members. These design related updates should make it easier to customize the look and feel of a Magnify.net video channel. Additionally, Magnify.net has released a new set of templates and graphics elements that include a series of themed graphics for niche sites.
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January 18, 2008
Every year we attempt to make new year resolutions in an effort to ensure the next year is better than the last. Some of us try to exercise more, some try to quit smoking, while others just try and have more time to relax. Do you stay true to your resolution? I cannot say I always do. There is just something about having a little skin the game that makes commitments stick. For example, I found that I would go to the gym more frequently when I was paying for the gym every month as opposed to when I had a free gym membership. That is exactly what StickK is all about. StickK is a site developed by Yale University economists who tested the effectiveness of commitment contracts through research. StickK uses currency to motivate you to reach your goals by making you literally pay for it you don't.
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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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December 21, 2007
Lifecasting, the process of broadcasting the events in a person's life through digital media, has become popular as more people become comfortable with expressing themselves online. Mod My Life puts an interesting spin of lifecasting by allowing you to control what a particular lifecaster is doing thus democratizing the lifecast.
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December 10, 2007
Managing information overload can be a bit of a task these days with all the blogs, feeds and other content options out there on the Web and filling up my feed reader. How can a user better navigate to the items that might interest them the most? This is a tough problem to solve as every users is different. AideRSS is trying to solve this problem by helping to filter out the noise to deliver only the content that matters to the most.
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November 19, 2007
Dawdle, a Chicago-based startup, recently launched to offer video game lovers a new place to buy and sell games, gaming systems and accessories. Dawdle tries to take the hassle out searching for items online by devoting the site to matching buyers with sellers via an innovative matching engine.
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November 5, 2007
Songza, a Chicago-based music startup, will soon launch to offer users the ability to search, play and share music online. This free music search offers an extremely minimalist and slick interface to create and play playlists online. Songza's interface was designed by Chicago-based Humanized. Songza is so fresh, they have not even officially launched yet but if you are in the Chicago-land area this week you might want to attend the official Songza launch party on Thurday night.
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FriendFeed
