May 15, 2008
If you are down in Atlanta, Georgia today and tomorrow you might want to swing into the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair which is taking place. The worlds best young scientists, including many Georgia students will all be on hand showing off their technology and engineering masterpieces. Check out the video below for a quick preview.
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April 23, 2008
At the heart of just about every web application is a database. Getting at and manipulating that data is often done through SQL statements which involve a level of database understanding. Kirix, a Chicago-based startup, is looking to help change that by exposing your data in a Web browser experience with the launch tomorrow of Strata. Strata is a powerful set of tools that enables anyone to access, browse and manipulate data from a Web browser.
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March 20, 2008
Diigo Diigo, a Reno-based startup I previously covered when it launched Web Slides, has just launched version 3.0 which is offers an integration of a number of social bookmarking and research services that create a powerful set of community tools.
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February 5, 2008
I use Flickr just about everyday to store and manage my photos as well as to keep track of what my contacts are doing by photo. I was happy to see Flickr add photo editing tools by integrating with Picnik online photo editing software. On thing urks me about the integration though is the fact that as a Flickr premium user I still DO NOT have full access to all of Picnik's offerings from within Flickr itself. I really feel that as part of the partnership and integration Flickr should have reconciled which users are premium Flickr users and done a revenue share to enable them full access to Picnik. That said, I have been on the lookout for an comparable alternative to Picnik for more sophisticated photo edits and updates to save me the hassle of firing up Adobe Photoshop. I recently found flauntR, a free online photo editing site, which offers a number of similar photo editing features.
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January 16, 2008
The Library of Congress just informed me of a new project they have undertaken with, Web 2.0 photo community, Flickr. In addition to posting photos on its own the Library of Congress website they have decided to also start putting historic photo sets on Flickr for all the world to see. The Library of Congress is looking to show off its photos to a larger photo centric community.
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January 5, 2008
Somewhat Frank Weekly Video: The Web has connected and empowered humans - but what does the Web look like? Today, thanks to my friend Jesse Thomas, I found Space Collective.org which is a cross-media information and entertainment channel for post-ideological, non-partisan, forward thinking terrestrials. That's a mouthful. Basically, Space Collective has created a number of videos, channels and projects devoted covering a number of space related topics. I wanted to showcase a video called" We Are The Web" which helps to visualize the Web.
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December 30, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending December 30, 2007.
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December 27, 2007
I think we would all rest more assured if we had a more clear picture of our health outlook. If we could better understand the makeup of our DNA we would would be more clear on what hand we have been dealt by our ancestors. 23andMe, a Silicon Valley-based startup that launched in mid-November, looks to make it easy to get a more clear picture by offering at-home DNA tests kits.
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November 28, 2007
Google announced today that they will be looking to get into trying to save the planet by announcing a new strategic initiative to develop electricity from renewable energy sources that will be cheaper than electricity produced from coal. I happy to see Google is taking such a stance and it makes me wonder what will Google do next. In the last week alone Google has announced they are making broadband switches, going to be offering a TV-related product soon, releasing a mobile phone platform soon and a Google Magazine was even spotted in print in China. It is a pretty amazing to think that a single textbox search engine could come to create such a diverse list of products.
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November 23, 2007
False alarm, I don't need a medic but sometimes I have medical questions, like what is "Steakhouse Syndrome", "Chronic Pain" or "Blurred Vision." Of course you can check out Web MD or HealthLine but there are a few new medical searches that offer more of a Web 2.0 approach. This article will examine a number of the new health and medical sites on the Web.
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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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August 22, 2007
After driving a used Toyota Avalon that I nicknamed "greenie" for obvious reasons for the last few years, I finally figured out what vehicle I wanted to buy and made the move on Sunday at Infiniti of Tyson's Corner and I am now a proud owner of a Diamond Graphite Infiniti FX35 (shown below). This article will summarize some of the online resources I went through to purchase my new vehicle.
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August 17, 2007
I have written several times about my love/hate relationship with email. So I am definitely on the lookout for email management applications and I just across something interesting. Anymails, a project created by Carolin Horn as part of her thesis, allows you to visualize your received emails as microbes. The project objective is to offer the user another type of email experience.
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July 6, 2007
Do you have questions about your latest gadget purchase? If so you can always take a look the instruction manual that came with that particular product. However, you still might have questions which is where FixYa comes in. FixYa offers free tech support and technical help for gadgets, electronic equipment...
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June 19, 2007
CNet's Webware recently announced the 2007 Webware 100 which highlights 10 applications in each of 10 categories, determined by Webware readers and the fans of the sites. Some of my favorite products are listed (i.e. AIM, Facebook, FeedBurner, Flickr, LinkedIn, PhotoBucket, YouTube, yourminis, and many more). Check out the full...
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June 3, 2007
Photo of the Week: Need for Speed, taken by Marina Campos Vinhal expresses how I have felt, as the last three months have been a blur with days, weeks & months flying by with all the conferences, travel and work. I woke up the other day thinking, what just happened?...
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May 16, 2007
Wine Library TV, a popular wine video blog that shares the wine expertise of founder and host Gary Vaynerchuk, has announced it has acquired the wine social network Cork'd. In simple terms, Cork'd is site for a wine lover to share and rate wine. It seems like a great fit...
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May 2, 2007
It has been awhile since I was looking for the right college experience. However, I do recall it being a rather daunting task as there are so many schools to examine in such a short period of time. A Chicago-based startup, Cappex aims to try give students some relief by...
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May 1, 2007
Search engines are often the first place we start when trying to determine "how to" do something we don't know much about. Searching the web does not always return the best results as there are often a number of steps involved in learning "how to" do something. We then have...
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March 30, 2007
We all have questions at one time or another and there are number of question and answer sites like Yedda, Yahoo Answers and Askville that facilitate a simple transaction between a user, who asks a question, and the web community, who attempts to provide an answer. Jabbits offers this same...
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March 20, 2007
Attention data is the information users give to web sites based on their interests and interactions and is a key personalization component. It is a valuable resource that reflects user interests, activities and values, and it serves as a proxy for their attention. APML or Attention Profiling Markup Language was...
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February 27, 2007
OpenCongress, a political information mashup, is a great resource for anyone strongly interested in politics on Capitol Hill. By cataloging information (and there is a lot information) in an easy to navigate format, users have access to voting records, and statements by Senators and Members, including the always interesting breakdown...
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February 23, 2007
FeedBurner released a feed market analysis report yesterday (February 22, 2007) which offers an unprecedented look into the syndication industry. This is the most comprehensive feed report of its kind to date. According to the report, Google, MyYahoo and Bloglines currently offer the most popular web-based feed aggregator products. It...
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January 23, 2007
Who would have thought that a history buff and a techie would EVER have anything in common? Turns out, they do – and it’s on the techie’s turf. A historian’s dream, Footnote brings the Smithsonian’s National Archives – thanks to a partnership with the museum – and much more right...
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January 16, 2007
Do you obsess about data? If so, Swivel might be able to help feed your obsession as it lets you explore, compare, share and upload data and graphs about politics, economics, weather, sports, business and beyond. Swivel offers a free social-based reposistory and charting tool for interesting graphs and data...
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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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December 31, 2006
It has been a great 2006, as Somewhat Frank has offered up over 400 articles which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the best of 2006 as we look forward to 2007. Here are some of the most popular...
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December 28, 2006
There are a number of Q & A web sites, like Yahoo Answers, Yedda and Grupthink among others, that have recently emerged to embrace a large number of users looking to get their questions answered. VideoJug takes a slightly different approach to helping people to find answers online. VideoJug is...
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November 26, 2006
The way that people read their content has been evolving as online syndication has spawned a number of different content reading approaches. Firefox introduced live browser bookmarks and IE7 recently added the feature to integrate feed reading into the web browser. A number of online and desktop-based feed readers round...
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September 21, 2006
The Internet has become an essential tool for finding product information. Many spend countless hours searching the web for information. For example, if you are searching for a new digital camera you might search the web for a wealth of information. But how do you know which digital camera is...
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September 16, 2006
I am pleased to announce that Go2Web20.net has been officially unveiled by Orli Yakuel, a talented Israel-based web 2.0 blogger, enthusiast and friend. The site offers visually driven directory to companies and applications of web 2.0 glory. It was developed by Eyal Shahar a fabulous web designer. I received sneak-peaks...
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September 3, 2006
The Internet has changed a lot in the last twenty years as the days of the flat world wide web have been replaced by the interactive live web. Personal homepages, one stop shops for news updates, calendars, email and everything else, have become more prominent as the web has become...
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August 13, 2006
The release of AOL search data last week was an admitted mistake by AOL which prompted them to apologize and express anger for its release. With the NY Times identifying the first person, AOL searcher 4417749, based on her search query data AOL representatives once again apologized. I like the...
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August 11, 2006
Compete, the US web statistics company, is predicting that the Internet portals like Yahoo and Google will soon be surpassed by social networks site like MySpace and Facebook. Are social networks going to be more popular than portal sites? There is definitely a trend in that direction as the graph...
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August 1, 2006
This is the question that, usability guru, Jakob Nielsen tried to answer in his most recent article. While Jakob admitted that the answer to was not clear he did give a few points which make it a bit more clear: Optimize for 1024x768, which is currently the most widely used...
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July 20, 2006
Yahoo! Real Estate and Yahoo! Search have partnered with the startup Zillow to help push out its Zestimates (Zillow contrived property value estimates) to the masses. I recently encountered them integrated into the new Yahoo homepage as a Featured item (as shown below). According to a post on the Yahoo!...
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May 9, 2006
ResourceShelf Real-Time is a new ResourceShelf feature which provide links to web, software, mobile and other application that "offer real-time or near real-time" data and information. ResourceShelf, a site powered by librarians including search engine legend Gary Price, has been aggregating at least one piece of information a day for...
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April 30, 2006
Categoriz volunteers a sitemap of web 2.o services by listing categorized links to the slew web 2.o offerings. According to the John Diep, Editor of Categoriz: "It started as a simple list of new products and services that we were watching after reading news and feature magazines on Web 2.0...
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April 17, 2006
David Sifry, founder and CEO of blog search engine Technorati, has posted his quarterly State of the Blogosphere report on the growth of the blogosphere. The report dittos many of trends he mentioned in his last report in January 2006. Sifry touches on the splog (spam blog) problem in addition...
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April 11, 2006
Last week, TechCrunch published part one of a series researching the top online music download services. Today, TechCrunch published part two of the series. The article, Subscription Music Services Compared: Part 2, examines a handful of subscription-based online music services searching for the best offering. This is the third posted...
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April 3, 2006
Chatting away on your cell phone because you have great cell phone package with free nights and weekends and loads of minutes may just have gone out of style with the latest study in which links extended cell phone usage to brain tumors. Prior studies just last year found showed...
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February 17, 2006
I would highly recommend any PR, marketing or business professional to read Naked Conversations, a fairly new book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. This book should help those professionals that are totally out of the loop on the blogosphere and the blogging phenomenon since it covers a brief history...
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November 30, 2005
I have once again been in the process of analyzing the new and existing blog platforms since the information in my last analysis in mid-July 2005 in my post titled Blog Platform Option Analysis may need to be updated. I am not quite finished with my analysis yet and will...
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August 26, 2005
The University of Massachusetts-Amherst Isenberg School of Management recently completed its third study of 134 major league professional sites and found that baseball had moved up significantly in fan involvement and interest into the top league position. The survey was led by sports communications professor Andy McGowan, the former director...
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