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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October 31, 2007
If you don't understand the value of Twitter you might want to listen now. I was just on Twitter checking some friend updates when I saw one of my Twitter friends yelled, "EARTHQUAKE!" The earthquake hit just outside of San Jose but thanks to Twitter I had personalized alerts from several friends in the area as soon as the quake hit.
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October 27, 2007
I spoke a few weeks ago at the Widget Summit in San Francisco on a panel dedicated to discussing the personal homepage space. The session was an hour long discussion with a cast of industry experts. I had a chance to get ahold of a video clip of my introduction. Additional footage will be coming out soon but I wanted to preview this video introducing myAOL to the Widget Summit crowd.
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October 18, 2007
We all have special days in history for one reason or another. Maybe your special day is your birthday, an anniversary or the day you started your blog. Now you have the opportunity to purchase that day in history on the web. MyDaySpace.com, a St Louis based startup, launched recently to enable users to create a Web page dedicated to their own special day in history.
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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 10, 2007
ffwd or "fast forward," a San Francisco-based startup formerly known as "Vadver," recently launched into private beta looking to offer users a discovery mechanism for online videos. ffwd is the brainchild Patrick Koppula, former COO of music recommendations site iLike. I got a chance to take a closer look at the private beta and provided some analyst.
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October 8, 2007
Naymz, a web profile aggregator that I highlighted previously, offers some interesting reputation metrics services. While you could setup web alerts via a number of services Naymz aggregates these services into one dashboard.
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October 5, 2007
Are you tired of keeping track of several travel itineraries from your hotel, flight and car rental reservations? TripIt is here to help organize your trips for you. TripIt makes it as easy as forwarding your itineraries to plans@tripit.com and it immediately starts organizing your trips.
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October 4, 2007
Email management is something I have written about several times. Most recently, I highlighted Xobni which has helped organize and expose some of the hidden social aspects of email. However, Xobni does not file or read your mail for you. SimplyFile, an Outlook utility by TechHit, helps to organize and file your email in one click.
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October 2, 2007
BAAGZ launched this past week at the DEMOfall 2007 conference to offer a social take on the personalized home page or startpage built on search. Built on the idea that "baagz" are a collection of sites, feeds, notes, videos and photos, Baagz enables users to organize and share their favorite stuff.
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October 1, 2007
BeFunky, a startup which was founded as a spin off of the more manually artist driven IamCartoon project, offers a few fun little applications to allow users to easily create and customize photos as cartoons and create personal avatars. BeFunky recently showed its stuff at TechCrunch40.
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September 27, 2007
Mixx launched last week to offer up a social news site for the mainstream to explore. Founded by Chris McGill, Mixx aims to offer a place for large publishing companies to get into the social media space.
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September 24, 2007
Having problems getting through all of your feeds in your reading list? Keeping up with the latest news from all the various publications can sometimes be as difficult as keeping up with your email where "email bankruptcy" runs rampant. FeedHub, a product of Pittsburgh-based mSpoke, has launched its personalized feed and recommendation product at the DEMO Conference. FeedHub creates a personalized RSS feed from you reading list and intelligently displays the most relevant post.
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September 21, 2007
MeeVee, a Silicon Valley-based personalized TV startup, has recently announced a partnership with Amazon to offer TV content via their Unboxed Video Previewer widget. The MeeVee product offers a personalized TV listings and video content. With its sites set on being the a personalized Joost-like product without having to install any software MeeVee will now be leveraging Amazon's widget distribution channel. Amazon widgets can be found at: http://widgets.amazon.com.
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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 6, 2007
Diigo, a Reno-based startup, has developed the WebSlides beta a browser-based player that displays live Web pages with integrated annotation, sticky notes, and highlights as a portable and interactive slideshow.
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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
The new AOL Mail has made quite a transformation since its beta launch in March as it continued to add features until it officially launched last week. The new AOL Mail product is very feature rich, Ajax email application with a nice interface.
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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 30, 2007
SplashCast Media has launched an update to the exisiting SplashCast player that we all have come to know and love. SplashCast has added a number of features as it continues to improve the product that launched earlier this year.
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August 28, 2007
CuteCircuit thinks you need a hug as the company has created an innovate shirt called the Hug Shirt. Leveraging Bluetooth technology and SMS text messaging, the Hug Shirt, that lets you send a hug to your fellow hug shirt wearing friends via your mobile phone. Each hug you send is played back like a message. So if you tap on your left shoulder the receiver of the message will feel that tap wherever they receive the message.
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August 27, 2007
Moo, a UK-based printing startup, launched Moo StickerBooks in July and Frank Gruber of SomewhatFrank.com finally got his in the mail. Check out what these Moo Stickers in the wild in this short video clip.
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August 26, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending August 26, 2007.
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August 20, 2007
Animoto, a New York-based startup, offers an application that generates movie trailer-like videos from your photos. Simply upload or pull in some of your favorite photos, add music and Animoto does the rest.
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August 19, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending August 19, 2007.
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August 15, 2007
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.
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August 13, 2007
iTunes has been offering personalized recommendations within the iTunes application for quite sometime and I have found them to be very accurate and helpful. I have often discovered new songs that I like within the recommendations and downloading them quickly for instant gratification. iTunes has started to role out syndication of personalized music data as My iTunes Widgets, making it easy to share your music interests.
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August 12, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending August 12, 2007.
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August 9, 2007
Global Grind, currently in private alpha, is a New York-based web 2.0 personalized home page startup that is said to be focused on the "hip hop" generation. Being a "hip hop" listener I was curious to see what this intriguing value proposition was all about. Driven by curiosity, which was said to have killed the cat, I was expecting Global Grind personalized home page to bounce with a Jay-Z hip hop beat or something. That was not the case, Global Grind is a personal home page product with parity with a number of personalized home page products on the market (i.e. widgets, drag and drop, etc). I thought that some of its design element decisions and button placements were a little odd.
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August 2, 2007
Does the photo below look familiar? You might recall the photo of myself with my good friend and popular blogger Orli Yakuel, which I clowned with the Graphita tool-set for a TechCrunch article I wrote while at Web 2.0 Expo last April. Graphita has officially launched Live Studio to make...
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July 27, 2007
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...
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July 22, 2007
Photo of the Week: I took a trip to Sausalito yesterday and took in some gorgeous sites including this little red sailboat in the Bay. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.22.07 Google Maps: A users guide to personalization LifeHacker offers a guide to personalizing Google Maps. The Impact of Facebook's Platform...
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July 18, 2007
One Llama, a product of six employee Champaign, Illinois-based startup One Llama Media, leverages audio analysis, search and discovery systems to offer a place for music lovers to discover, listen, share and buy new music. Though in the music discovery category, One Llama differs from Last.fm, Pandora and MyStrands by...
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July 15, 2007
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...
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