I just spoke at the Social Rockstar Workshop at Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. about Social Media & Blogging. It was a great conversation and thank you to everyone that attended. I have uploaded to docstoc the online document sharing site for anyone that would like to take a look at the presentation.

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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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I will be speaking about social media and blogging in May and June at the following events: Social Rockstar Workshop - May 16. 2008 - Washington, D.C. I will be speaking about social media and blogging and making some references to its use in the corporate environment of AOL, Tribune and Classified Ventures where he has lead blogging & social media initiatives. There are a number of local D.C. area social media experts which will be offering perspective followed by workshops. TECH cocktail CONFERENCE TECH cocktail CONFERENCE - May 29, 2008 - Chicago, IL I am co-hosting our first TECH cocktail CONFERENCE bringing attendees access to a day full of amazing speakers, great perspectives and advice in an intimate environment where speakers are approachable. The goal of the conference is to assist attendees by bringing them essential business startup tips, advice and knowledge from a super-cast of successful founders, developers and entrepreneurs. It should be a super day followed by our popular TECH cocktail Chicago 8 mixer event. Use the discount code: somewhatfrank to save on your ticket! BlogPotomac BlogPotomac - June 13, 2008 - Falls Church, VA I am giving the lunch keynote on social media Friday the 13th for the first BlogPotomac event. BlogPotomac seeks to provide a local “un-conference” on best marketing practices for the social media community in the D.C. metro area.

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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending May 11, 2008.

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Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day as it acts as the foundation of your day. A few weeks ago Lijit Networks hosted a breakfast the morning after TECH cocktail DC 2. It at Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. and was a lot of fun. I got a chance to capture episode 24 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

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The United States is ultimately a startup so I thought that is might be fun to take advantage of living near the nations capitol and show off the main office of the executive branch - the White House. I was able to capture some of the sites and sounds of the White House as part of the spring tour which I found out about through their own use of technology via the White House RSS feeds and podcasts.

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Twitter has exploded since coming out earlier last year and I have talked about it a number of times and even put my thoughts on video. I even saw my own sister come around and sign up for an account after talking to her about it awhile back and getting the: "why would I want to do that?" reaction. Twitter recently were reported to take a little more funding thus making an exit price tag more pricey. But I wanted pose the question to the blogosphere and my SOMEWHAT FRANK readers: What is Twitter worth? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

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TECH cocktail DC 2 the community builder event that took place last Thursday evening in Washington, D.C. showcased six startups from the local area. The event united over four hundred guests for an evening of conversations, showing off and fun. This is the last event before the upcoming TECH cocktail CONFERENCE which will unite all the various TECH cocktail cities for a full day conference in Chicago on May 29th. The list of speakers is pretty amazing and the focus of the conference is to help anyone in business to take a more "no nonsense" approach by leveraging technology and the Web (i.e. running a "real" business rather than one setup to simply attract as many users as possible with no real monetization strategy in mind).

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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending April 27, 2008.

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"The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become." —Lady Bird Johnson

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Do you remember when online forums were the cutting edge in online community building tools? While forums still have a place on the Web there are so many richer community building experiences. Forums are still being used and Twing looks to bring them up to par by aggregating online forums. Twing offers a forum search and adds community features to surface the 'hot items' in the forums.

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You have probably seen the Lijit search widget on a number of sites around the Web. It has been the search option for SOMEWHAT FRANK and TECH cocktail for sometime as it offers some great site search analytics in a manageable and easy to digest format. I even get a weekly statistics email from Lijit keeping me updated as to how search is performing every week and what people are searching for. Frank Gruber as a lijit search widget When I visited Boulder, Colorado back in March 2008 for our first TECH cocktail Boulder I got a chance to visit the Lijit Networks headquarters and I captured it on video. Thanks to Tara "Tarable" Anderson for the impromptu guided tour and for turning me into a Lijit search widget (shown to the right).

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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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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending April 13, 2008.

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I am a taggaholic. I love to tag items in Flickr and across the Web. I even find myself sometimes tagging other peoples photos and online content. This would not be possible without "folksonomy" and recently got to watch Thomas Vander Wal present at AOL as part of the AOL Developer Network Speaker Series. Thomas Vander Wal invented the word "folksonomy" and knows a thing or two about the social web. It's more than just today's social networks - it's layers of interactivity, circles of sociability, reputation and identity. He also shared his thoughts on the spheres of sociability, social objects, and the path to get users to fully embrace creating and sharing social objects. I got a chance to talk with Thomas after his presentation and it is episode 20 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

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Editor's Note: With lifestreaming and profile aggregation being a hot topic lately the growing number of social networks managing all those connections can be a lot of work. Enter lifestreaming and sites like sociathing! which I highlighted previous as they demoed at TECH cocktail Boulder. Dustin Mooney, an 18 year old senior in high school, offers his SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion on the new startup called Lifestream.fm as a SOMEWHAT FRANK guest authors. Dustin writes his on blog called Dustin's Dispatch that is worth checking out. If you have a SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion and would like contribute it to SOMEWHAT FRANK please contact me today. Lifestream.fm Lifestream.fm recently launched into beta, so far I have to say, this is the best “life streaming” service I have found. However, it has tough competition with FriendFeed, SocialThing, and others. Lifestream.fm offers users the ability to aggregate numerous services such as Del.icio.us, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Pownce, Tumblr, and many others. It also allows you to aggregate numerous RSS feeds.

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As a member of the frequent flyer club, I have used TripIt and previously reviewed when it first launched. Now TripIt has made traveling easier by adding some additional mobile support for users on the go with the TripIt Mobile release. With TripIt Mobile users can access what they need to know from their mobile phones including flight changes, and in my case cancellations, hotel addresses and phone numbers, and auto rental info. By adding additional integration components for your TripIt account, even restaurant reservations can be accessed. Making TripIts applications available on mobile devices makes a lot sense since when you are traveling you are most likely cannot as easily get on your computer. TripIt offers applications to enable staying in touch with others in your social network, allowing you to schedule appointments if in the same area or at the same event. In checking out the mobile experience I snapped the photo shown here can be visited on your mobile device at: m.tripit.com.

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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending April 6, 2008.

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If you are on the go or in lots of meetings (like I find myself) you might want to get your voice mail converted to text message or email. YouMail, an Aliso Viejo, California based startup has just added this feature to its private beta which already is a feature rich mobile voice mail solution which offers personalized voice mails based on caller ID, smart greetings and the ability to manage voice mails over the Web.

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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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It is time for a Web 2.0 pondering checkpoint poll. In the past there have been a number of videos and such that I have referred to that try and define Web 2.0 which included this basic definition video to this inventive video. But I wanted to see what you think about Web 2.0. What would you say if you had to fill in the blank to complete the following sentence: Web 2.0 is ______? Leave it in the comments section below and be sure to pass this post on to your friends and colleagues as we look to create a list potential Web 2.0 definitions.

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Though email is a bit of burden at times, it is also in many cases the first point of contact for people as they go about their everyday routine. A large number of email users spend a significant part of their day working inside the email environments. Xoopit, a San Francisco-based startup is looking to capitalize on that point by looking to create a series of products that transform the email inbox into the largest social network. Xoopit takes a similar approach to Xobni an Outlook plugin which I highlighted previously and is rumored to be acquired very soon. Xoopit, today announced they had raised $5 Million Series A round of funding led by Accel Partners and Foundation Capital as they also rolled out a private beta.

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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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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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Looking for free licensed content to be able to use on your own blog or website? Voxant Newsroom looks to help by distributing and promoting content from licensed content sources for free. Voxant offers publishers a place to find and embed licensed video, text, and photos from over two hundred news sources from a variety of providers. Voxant places advertising in the its embeddable content to monetize the content making it possible to keep the content available for free to users.

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If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, mark your calendars for BlogPotomac, a one day event aimed at providing advanced marketing insights beyond the average social media 101. BlogPotomac will be held on Friday, June 13, 2008 at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. BlogPotomac seeks to provide a local “un-conference” on best marketing practices for the social media community in the D.C. metro area.

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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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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 23, 2008.

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I was walking down the street in Boulder, Colorado earlier this month and was intrigued by a storefront symbol. I looked into the storefront windows and my eyes were met with colorful graffiti-like artwork, handmade toys and lots of tees. I had bumped into JoyEngine. JoyEngine is a brand created by the boutique design firm cypher13 and offers a place for artists and designers to unite and share their work. The JoyEngine store doubles as an art gallery for local artists and toymakers. JoyEngine also has its own line of apparel. At JoyEngine, cypher13 promotes and sells artwork created by the cypher13 team, other local artists, and provides access to ultra-limited designer art toys, offers apparel by independent designers, and supplies the local street art scene with spraypaint, paint markers, and other art supplies. Online JoyEngine offers an blogging community for designers and artists where they can exchange ideas and showcase their work. They also offers some cool artist desktop backgrounds for download.

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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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Microblogging has made it easy to share but with a number of services available one can get overloaded with options making it difficult to keep them all updating the time. Rather than have to stick to one service you can post to a number of services at one time with the help of Ping.fm. Other services like socialthing! and HelloTxt offer similar functionality but I thought it was worth mentioning yet another service as we all look for the ultimate one stop shop for managing all our microblogging needs at once.

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As reported on TechCrunch earlier this week, Facebook is working on a chat functionality. They held a press conference today and TechCrunch recorded this exclusive video demo of Facebook Chat. The presenter in the video is Peter Deng, the product manager for Facebook Chat, who made it clear that this is a preliminary version of the product. Facebook Chat appears to be something that available when you are on Facebook with the ability to turn it on and off.

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If you are startup looking for a little funding and guidance you might want to check into one of the incubator program like TechStars. Nestled just outside of Denver in Boulder, Colorado the TechStars program is in its second year and still accepting hungry startup founders for this years applicants. Throughout the summer program, founders can get up to $15,000 in seed funding, are surrounded by like-minded entrepreneurs, work in great space downtown Boulder, and are given access to learn from an line-up of fabulous mentors.

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SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits from around the Web gathered by Frank Gruber for the week ending March 16, 2008.

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Brica Brica What? BricaBox, the social content platform which I covered previously here and here, that launched a few weeks ago offers users the ability to display structured content with social features. After many attempts I finally got a chance to sit down with BricaBox founder and CEO Nate Westheimer while attending FOWA Miami 2008 which is the latest SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode.

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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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Wow! AOL buying Bebo for $850 million was a pleasant surprise to wake up to this morning. I think this is a smart move for AOL as Bebo is currently the third largest social network on the Web behind Facebook and MySpace. With AIM offering one of the larger social graphs on the Web but a turnstile of online social networking site attempts in the last two years. It looks like AOL has finally decided to invest externally in the space which adds to the large number of other acquisitions that recently occurred in the social platforms group which include Goowy and Yedda.

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Alltop, a new startup creation founded by Guy Kawasaki, just announced a simple landing page product for those looking for the top feeds for a number of different vertical categories. Taking inspiration from popurls which aggregates the top urls on the Web, Alltop offers pages filled with feeds on a various topics.

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Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed today at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. This is the second time I have seen Mark Zuckerberg speak in person as the first I recorded at TechCrunch40. Unfortunately, this time though I am press I was not able to get a seat in the main room where Mark spoke. Bummer. Sarah Lacey the author of a Business Week cover article as well as a book on Mark Zuckerberg interviewed Mark.

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On a clear, crisp evening in Boulder, Colorado over two hundred technology enthusiasts piled into The Foundry Billiards Club to better connect and amplify the technology signal of the region. The event, TECH cocktail Boulder in partnership with DEMO, showcased five startups from the local area. The event was sponsored by Boulder-based Lijit and Chicago and soon to be also Boulder-based skinnyCorp - thank you both! Since TECH cocktail is one of my own creations with co-founder Eric Olson, we were really enjoyed the evening getting to hangout with some of the technology "movers and shakers" in the Denver/Boulder area. For more details check out the official TECH cocktail Boulder 1 photos and event wrap-up article. Read on for more on the startups that demoed at TECH cocktail Boulder.

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JiwaMusic, a Paris, France based music site built on Ruby on Rails by Jiwa SARL that I previously covered, launched into beta in May 2007 to offer users the ability to search, create, share and embed music playlists. Last week, Jiwa launched a new version of its product to offer more songs (more than 400,000 songs as thousands are added every day), a new design and a brand new player, new ways to share your musical tastes among other things. I have 20 beta invites so if you are interested in giving the new JiwaMusic a try please drop a comment on this post and I will send one to you.

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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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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.