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 14, 2008
Looking for something new to read, watch or play? blippr, a startup created by Tag Team Interactive, offers a social utility which aims to facility social recommendations about books, games, movies, music, and (soon) TV from your friends. With blippr users can compile lists of things that they love and "blip" them which is similar to voting for an item (i.e. digg).
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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 27, 2008
Looking to explore and find a few new blogs on the Web? Blogged is blog directory launched earlier this week to aid discovery and exploration of the blogosphere. Blogged is self-funded by founders Kenneth Yeh and Gladys Kong and is powered by readers and also employs a full-time editorial staff to maintain the integrity of the directory.
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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 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
DEMO 08 was a blur of excitement and adrenaline as 77 companies showcased their stuff in front of the tech world. I pulled together roundups for Day 1 and Day 2. Now I wanted to look back and express the launches that I found the most interesting personally. Please keep in mind that there might be some very compelling products that I left off this list because I could not relate to them as well as the ones on the list below. If you attended DEMO 08 please drop a comment below and let me know which launches were keen on.
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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 2, 2008
I spent many summer days as a child attempting to sell lemonade to anyone that passed by. I cannot say it was that lucrative a business and recall spending a lot of time waiting and waiting for lemonade customers. Aside from a solid suntan from my hours spent waiting I also learned that lemonade stands are all about location, location, location. Lemonade has taken the idea of the "lemonade stand" to the Web making it easy to recommend items you like on sites where you already have visitors.
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January 1, 2008
Do you ever wonder what software products you spend the most time on? I do. While there are ways to check the last time you use a product it is not a walk in the park. Wakoopa tracks what kind of software, games and other applications you use. Similar to how Alexa keeps track of web site metrics, Wakoopa looks to keep track of applications that you run on your PC or Mac. Wakoopa makes it easy to share your top software as well as discover new software from other Wakoopa users.
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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 17, 2007
I have too many books and not enough time to read them all. However, you might be on the other side of the fence with this one and looking for new books to read. 22books might be a place to look as it offers users a place to create, find and share book lists.
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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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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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November 29, 2007
The holiday season is upon us and with that it is time to get your holiday wish list in order. In my family if I do not produce and circulate a wish list I could end up getting some random gifts for the holidays. What's the best way to collect, organize and share your holiday wish list? There are a number of Web 2.0 sites that are devoted to creating shopping or holiday wish lists and I will list them in this article.
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November 27, 2007
After two of the biggest shopping days of the year Black Friday and Cyber-Monday respectively I figured it was probably important to make sure you save your receipts. You may throw them in your wallet, purse or in a shoebox under your bed somewhere. With Shoeboxed you can save all your receipts in one place online. Shoeboxed aims to make it easy to keep track of your own personal shopping history by offering an online repository with sprinkles of social candy to make sharing it easy to share some of your personal shopping history.
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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 25, 2007
LinkDoozer, an online bookmarking startup, offers a way for users to easily add and save bookmarks in a startpage-like approach. Unlike typical social bookmarking sites that look for users to add as many bookmarks as possible LinkDoozer focuses on users adding only the sites they like the best and encourages users to rate and review site. With social networking aspects LinkDoozer lends itself to easy link sharing similar to other social bookmarking site.
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October 16, 2007
If you are an online marketer you might be looking for a place to connect and share ideas with other marketers. Gooruze was recently launched to offer a ranked advice community for online marketing professionals.
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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 11, 2007
Putting a name with a face can sometimes be a rather taunting task in public. However, online Polar Rose is looking to help solve this problem by leveraging facial recognition technology and the power of people online.
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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 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 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.
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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 29, 2007
Women looking for a place to find interesting content recommendations should look no further than Sk*rt. Sk*rt offers a social news site of "pure goodness" which is geared towards topics and interests that women might like. The platform which could be deemed a Digg-clone offers content discovery via social recommendations.
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August 23, 2007
AdaptiveBlue, a startup that focuses on a smarter browsering experience, has created feed output for its SmartLink functionality. This is feature called appropriately, SmartLink Feeds will make it easy for anyone to take pull in the feed from a SmartLinks widget and display it on their blog, website or personalized homepage. SmartLinks are collected via AdaptiveBlue's BlueOrganizer.
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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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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 6, 2007
KnockaTV is coming, according to the vintage "I want my MTV" style video that is playing on the site (go to the site to see what I am taking about). I just signed up for a beta tester account for KnockaTV last night and this morning I noticed TechCrunch also is looking at the video service but we both have about the same amount of information.
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