April 15, 2008
My first day working at AOL back in the fall of 2006 I had the pleasure of having lunch with Tony Conrad as he was visiting to start working with the AOL. Since then, Sphere which I covered previously when it launched in May 2006, worked with both AOL News and myAOL Mgnet Recommendations. It is a pleasure to see that AOL has finally acquired Sphere for an undisclosed amount.
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April 2, 2008
Taking a page out the Netflix and Amazon playbook, outbrain, a New York-based startup, officially launched yesterday to offer a ratings and recommendations widget for content. With outbrain bloggers, news, media, magazines, rss readers and other publishers/aggregators can add a rating and personalized content recommendation widget to their blogs and sites easily and free.
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March 26, 2008
Finding the best place to eat, get a haircut or buy groceries in your local neighborhood can sometimes be a daunting task using the Web. While there are some sites like Yelp that lend a helping hand they don't cover everything you might be looking for and they certainly do not have all of your friends recommendations.
Loladax, a Washington, DC based startup, which just officially launched today is looking to offer prioritized search based on recommendations on Facebook friends. Loladex, founded by Laurence Hooper and Dan Goodman both formerly of AOL, is looking to offer true word of mouth by creating a compelling local search engine experience for just about anything in your area.
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March 4, 2008
YourTrumanShow, the personal video diaries startup, that launched, VideoMap, a video discovery widget at the DEMO Fall 2007 Conference has now released it to the Facebook world. VideoMap lets users see who links to them and who they link to as well as the video content they have collected. As user watch videos, a graphically rich visual map tracks the path of discovery, relationships, and content. VideoMaps also leverages YourTrumanShow's recommendation algorithms to help cultivate social interactions.
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March 2, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 2, 2008.
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February 28, 2008
If you are a motorcycle or political enthusiast than listen up because you are going to like this. LOUD3R, a network for niche enthusiast offerings, has launched a couple of different aggregation sites. FAST3R the motorcycle site and VOT3R the political site are pulled together by leveraging a semantic publishing engine used in combination with natural language processing and human intelligence the engine selects and publishes the best and most interesting content to the network. Users can also contribute content and comments to the site.
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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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December 19, 2007
If you have not made a wish list yet your time is growing short but don't fret. Imagini, not mentioned previously in the wish list round-up, might be able to help you both create personal wish lists in a flash as well as help you come up with gift giving ideas for others.
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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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December 5, 2007
There are a number of social news sites like Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and many others that all leverage social recommendations to power discovery. Tiinker is a social news startup based in Australia that recently launched into private beta that leverages both active and passive user inputs to determine what content should be displayed on the site.
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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 14, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending October 14, 2007.
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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 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 3, 2007
Video Value a music recommendation site that I recently came across that suggests music videos that you might like. Video Valve gets smarter as you play and rate additional videos. Though Video Valve resembles as a startup in reality it is a product of Viacom International.
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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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September 25, 2007
Looking for a recommendation? Try This leverages user contributed questions and answers to offer recommendations. Try This reminds me of a cross between Digg and Yahoo Answers as it offers community recommendations by leveraging a question and answer format.
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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.
Sphere It
September 24, 2007
YourTrumanShow, the personal video diaries startup, has just launched, VideoMap, video discovery widget at the DEMO Conference in San Diego, California. Catering to artists and online personalities, YourTrumanShow, looks to cultivate discovery within its network by exposing its interesting video linking feature to other social network and the Web via VideoMap.
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September 23, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending September 23, 2007.
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September 12, 2007
Ruckus Networks, a Herndon,Virginia-based startup, has been making some noise on college campuses across the US. Ruckus is a college-only multimedia service offering free ad-supported downloads to college students. After some initial bad reviews, Ruckus has over 3 million music tracks available and just recently launched a Facebook application, extensive social networking capabilities, and an improved video service just in time for the new school year.
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September 9, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending September 9, 2007.
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September 5, 2007
Grayboxx, a Silicon Valley-based local search startup, has been in stealth mode for quite sometime but recently surfaced by kicking off a tour of United States cities last week in Burlington, Vermont. Grayboxx bases its local search results on recommendations of neighbors coupled with some snazzy algorithms to assess user behavior.
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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 17, 2007
What's buzzing on the web? Wouldn't it be nice to know? Using a a combination of techniques which include sophisticated algorithms, click tracking and human editors BuzzFeed, a NY-based startup, is place to find out what is buzzing on the Web.
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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 10, 2007
SeeqPod, a "playable search" product born in the UC's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, offers music search that scours the Web for music in both audio and video formats. Upon finding music you can play it immediately and add it to a playlist which can then be embedded into other pages like the playlist I quickly pulled together below. Songs and playlists can be shared via email or embedded into other sites. In fact, I learned about SeeqPod from a friend of mine, David Robinson after he shared a playlist and was enthusiastic about the product.
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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 17, 2007
Streakr just rolled into beta to offer a content discovery toolbar and social networking product. You may experience deja vu when exploring Streaker as it might remind you of StumbleUpon. The Streakr toolbar offers a couple of different ways to discover and rate content that map directly to StumbleUpon. Check...
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July 10, 2007
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...
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July 1, 2007
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...
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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 17, 2007
Photo of the Week: Jen Consalvo recently snapped this photo titled backlight. A little sunshine is a beautiful thing and is good for the soul - this little yellow guy appears to agree. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 06.17.07 YouTube Remixer: Edit Videos Online At YouTube YouTube has officially launched YouTube...
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June 14, 2007
Are you ready to rock all summer long but don't know when you favorite bands are coming to town? Of course you could go out and search for your favorite bands sites and check each individually but now there may be an easier way. Bands In Town recently launched to...
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May 26, 2007
With the official public beta launch of Yoono Buzz It!, a free social Web clipping and annotation plug-in for FireFox you may want to get to know Yoono. Yoono is a socialized search community featuring a patent-pending recommendation engine. It aggregates bookmarks, RSS feeds and annotations/notes to rank over 70...
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May 25, 2007
Which celebrities do you look like? AOL may be able to help answer that question with its recent launch of an innovative facial recognition technology, similar to that of Riya and MyHeritage, created by AOL Labs in collaboration with Oxford University and Caltech University. Thus far the technology has been...
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May 3, 2007
With StumbleUpon recently acquired for somewhere between $60 and $75 million it has brought other similar sites into the spotlight as the search is on for the next Stumble. StumbleUpon leverages a stupid plain simple approach to enable its users to discover new places and videos on the web. If...
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April 29, 2007
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...
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April 11, 2007
Yoono, a user powered suggestion community, will make it easy for its users to make more suggestions via the browser next week when it launches the "Buzz It" plugin. Yoono already offers browsing suggestions as you are visiting various web locations. The new browser applet will enable users to bookmark...
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March 18, 2007
Photo of the Week: This is a photo I took in my old neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago prior to moving on to AOL in Virginia. Happy St. Patrick's Day! Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.18.07 Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google Remember when Napster was a lawsuit...
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February 13, 2007
Me.dium offers an innovative and compelling application that blends real-time web attention-data with instant messenger social networking capabilities. Similar to MyBlogLog, you can see when others are visiting a particular site you might be visiting, the major difference is that you can see what sites others around the web are...
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January 13, 2007
Have something witty to say about a particular item? Riffs, an ATTAP Technologies company, offers a feature-rich, social bookmarking, recommendation site for information-sharing details about movies, music, fashion and other sorts of interests. With Riffs you can recommend different items by starting a riff, registering and posting a witty comment...
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