April 9, 2009
Conversations are being sparked in a number of places on the Web these days from Twitter to Facebook to blogs. AdaptiveBlue's product called Glue takes a different approach by enabling conversations and sharing on sites that you visit via the browser. Glue is an browser plugin that appears on your current page to show you friends who looked at the same things and what they thought. It brings your social network to the content pages that you visit rather than integrating directly into various web sites.
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August 19, 2008
There are number of social news offerings on the Web these days with sites like Mixx, Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. They offer a great way to discover new content from across the Web. Business Week has just rolled out its own social news offering called Business Exchange. Though Business Exchange is still very much an alpha it already appears to offer a number of topics and links to content contributed by the community. The articles are then linked back to the original source.
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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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March 31, 2008
StyleFeeder, a Cambridge, Massachusetts based personal shopping engine startup, is announcing its open API that lets developers create third-party applications, widgets and even integrate all of StyleFeeder's key functionality into any e-commerce website.
According to a recent release, StyleFeeder founder and CTO Philip Jacob had this to say:
"Essentially, we're offering a potent set of personal and social online shopping tools to developers -- the possibilities are endless."
StyleFeeder offers a Web 2.0 social and personalized shopping recommendation engine. By learning about a user's likes and dislikes, StyleFeeder helps them shop and discover new products they might just want to buy or share with others. StyleFeeder also has leveraged social media to offer a pretty solid fashion and style blog.
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March 31, 2008
Editor's Warning: This article contains adult content and it not suitable for children. If you are under age please navigate away from this article immediately. Thank you.
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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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March 18, 2008
Are you a fashion trend setter? If so, you might want to check out Polyvore. Polyvore is a social fashion site where users can create arrange outfits or inspiration boards to share where you and others can potentially buy the included items. Polyvore enables users to drag and drop clothing items or snag items from the Web t0 create new outfits which are then tied into various shopping sites and could offer some interesting revenue sharing options. Launched in February 2007 and backed by Benchmark Capital, Polyvore recently hit the one million outfit mark.
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March 1, 2008
MetroProper, a Chicago-based company, that recently demoed at TECH cocktail Chicago 7 just relaunched their site to offer a totally fresh design. Deemed as "Digg for local businesses" MetroProper offers an number of social sharing and bookmarking features.
I got a chance to chat with Philip Tadros founder of MetroProper and he talked to some of the design changes prior to their official launch.
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January 21, 2008
Shareaholic, the popular Firefox extension that aggregates bookmarklets that I previously covered on Somewhat Frank, has released an update which continues to strengthen its value proposition as the web browser extension that offers one stop sharing. Shareaholic has recently added Tumblr, Mixx, Simpy and FriendFeed to its sharing options which already include a number of sites. Shareholic also offers popularity metrics like how many times the a page you are visiting has been Dugg or saved to del.icio.us.
My favorite thing about Shareaholic is that it helps remove some of the clutter that piles up from installing and using all a number of sharing bookmarklets. Check out the latest Shareaholic release and share to your hearts content.
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December 23, 2007
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending December 23, 2007.
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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 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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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 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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FriendFeed
