January 20, 2009
Today in Washington, DC, I was able to attend the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Though the festivities were streamed live via CNN and Facebook with commentary from my friends I decided I needed to experience this historic event in person. So I jumped on the Metro and made my way to the National Mall. In doing so I captured a number of images and videos which will serve as lasting memories of this historic day. The Internet connections via the wireless towers in the DC area were brought to a crawl so it was tough to stream videos from the Mall but I captured what I could with both Flixwagon and Qik.
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January 15, 2009
Diner in Chelsea having some very sturdy coffee mugs and solid waffles, bacon and eggs the breakfast discussions were pretty interesting. The breakfast was made up of the following @innonate, @ceonyc, @noreaster, @msg, Ian Costello and myself (@somewhatfrank) and we did a couple of live video discussions about our favorite products as well as lifestreaming, backup, chat and other products and services. Oh we also explained how awesome Mom's are! If you were unable to attend please check out the two videos. Thank you to everyone that came out to have some breakfast and give their somewhat frank opinions about social media and technology while I was in NYC!
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January 14, 2009
Last week, I previewed my trip to the Consumer Electronics Show as I had just touched down and was getting ready to experience my first CES. Well, I am back from CES and to be totally frank, all I can say is "Wow, that was a good time!" Unfortunately, it took me until today to decompress and get enough sleep to be able to spill details about all that I experienced last week at CES. First things first, a big thank you Intel for sponsoring my trip out to CES as an Intel Insider. It was an unbelievable experience.
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September 2, 2008
If you are an entrepreneur looking for a little funding to get your startup going there are a number of incubator programs that I have covered previously like Y Combinator, TechStars and LaunchBox Digital. But if you are looking for a little more than what an incubator can offer you might want to look for an angel investor. If you do not know an angel investor you might be out of luck but there is a new company looking to help connect angel investors with startups and visa versa. AngelSoft, a New York-based company, looks to aggregate angel investors into one site that can then browsed by entreprenuers in need. With Angelsoft entrepreneurs are able to browse over 400 angel investment groups and early-stage venture capital funds and apply for financing using a single common application.
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August 28, 2008
Are you a foodie? If you love food you might want to watch episode 38 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV as it explores the new gourmet food marketplace called Foodzie. Foodzie looks to make it easy for gourmet food producers to sell their products online similar to how Etsy creates a marketplace for handmade goods. Foodies should love it as it offers a brand new channel for buying gourmet food. Foodzie is based in Boulder and was founded as part of the 2008 TechStars incubator program by Emily Olson, Nik Bauman and Rob LaFave.
I had a chance to meetup with the Foodzie team recently and talk with them about their new food product marketplace. Check out the video with Foodzie (below).
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August 27, 2008
Ever wonder what sites and services are hot on the Web at any given time? I do. Me.dium, a Boulder, Colorado-based search startup, also has had that question on its mind as it recently launched a social search product called Me.dium Social Search. Me.dium has been known for its social toolbar products for the past few years but taken its learnings and social data and created an social search product based on real-time social activity on the Web.
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August 26, 2008
Online storage has been something that I have been a little skeptical of over the past few years as certain storage sites have come and gone leaving users without access to their stuff. With solving this problem in mind, DC area blogger Jimmy Gardner decided to write up some specs and financed the creation of a new set of online tools. MyDropBin was launched to help users save and share stuff online.
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August 25, 2008
It seems like just yesterday that I talked to Andrew Lee at the Lijit breakfast that followed the last TECH cocktail DC event. Andrew explained how he was looking to create a free online alternative to the popular music video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero as part of the 2008 LaunchBox Digital incubator program. I have to admit I was a little skeptical of that becoming reality in just a summer. But Andrew and his team made me eat my words a few weeks ago when they demonstrated JamLegend at LaunchBox Digital.
I was able to capture a few video clips with JamLegend and have compiled them into an episode 39 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV. Check out the video (below) which shows off JamLegend and stars myself, Andrew Lee and the JamLegend team of Ryan Wilson and Arjun Lall, as well as well as cameos from Jimmy Gardner and Nick O'Neill.
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August 24, 2008
A "blog mother" is a person that inspired you to start a blog. For me, it is was a session which covered blogging led by Amanda Watlington and Jeremy Zawondny which inspired me to start Somewhat Frank, and the rest is history. I ran into Amanda while hosting TECH cocktail Boston 2 a few weeks ago who I had not seen since ad:tech Chicago back in the summer of 2006.
I was able to sit down with Amanda Watlington and chat with her for a bit about search,blogging and the book writing process for another episode of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV. Check out the video (below) as I chat with my "blog mother" Amanda Watlington.
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August 20, 2008
Think you want to start a new company and need a little funding and guidance? You might want to check into an incubator program. I recently covered Y Combinator and LaunchBox Digital as they each launched a dozen startup. Today I was in Boulder, Colorado as TechStars 2008 Investor and Demo day as it launched its second years worth of startups.
TechStars was founded last year by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown and Jared Polis and helped produce some great new startups in its first year. I previously visited the TechStars office last time I was in Boulder. Today I wanted to give you a preview of the startups that presented.
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August 16, 2008
Contributed to SOMEWHAT FRANK by guest author Jen Consalvo. When design firms are looking for images for projects, they typically go to Getty or other more traditional stock photo sites. When bloggers need an image, they use their own or likely go straight to Google or Flickr. If all goes well, they find an image they can use legally. In other cases.... well, let's just say there are a lot of pictures being used today that violate the owner's copyright. Photrade, a new site still in private beta, is set on protecting photographer's rights while changing the way bloggers and online publishers find images in hopes of creating a win-win environment for the publishers and photographers alike.
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August 15, 2008
A few weeks ago Mike Arrington gave me a call asking me if, my employer, AOL, had acquired SocialThing. Though it struck very close to home, I had to bite my tongue since the deal had not yet closed and did not comment on the matter. Now that is official I can. It is true, AOL has entered into an agreement to acquire SocialThing, the Boulder, Colorado based social aggregating lifestream startup. The terms are not disclosed and the acquisition is still subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions.
I met founders Matt "indiekid" Galligan, Ben Brightwell and the team as they demo'ed at TECH cocktail Boulder on March 6th. Matt is originally from Illinois, like I am, and moved to Boulder to create SocialThing as part of the TechStars incubator program. I got a preview of the SocialThing private beta at TECH cocktail which was a few days before they launched at SXSW Interactive and were written up favorably on TechCrunch as being easier to use than FriendFeed. I was impressed by what this startup had created as it offered a wrapper for all your social activities making it easy to post to multiple networks at once. SocialThing is integrated with 13 social media properties including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Flickr and is currently still in private beta.
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August 11, 2008
Do you get lost a lot while driving? If you do you might want to get yourself a GPS navigation system. Dash Navigation, a Sunnyvale, California based startup, which I previously previewed in episode 30 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV has created an innovative GPS system that connects to the Internet. I recently tested the Dash Express GPS system myself as I spent the day navigating DC with the hot new gadget.
Check out the video (below) which is episode 36 of the video podcast SOMEWHAT FRANK TV. If you like what you see you can purchase your own Dash Express GPS.
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August 8, 2008
Filling a vehicle with gas might be the current problem for many, but finding a place to park the car has been an issue for a lot longer. Several companies have fired up to help frustrated drivers park their vehicles. Two previous posts addressed the parking problem with Parkwhiz and Parking Hunter - and I am sure there are a few more similar products.
The new kid in the parking reservation camp is BestParking.com, a free online search engine and rate calculator for Manhattan’s 1,030 parking facilities with a free mobile version available. Founded in 2006 by 20-year old college student Benjamin Sann, BestParking.com offers a very simple design. Interestingly, the site was inspired by “an episode of Seinfeld in which George refuses to pay for a parking space.” The company consists of 3 full-time and 6 part-time employees.
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August 7, 2008
With the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic games ready getting underway you might be looking to stay up to speed with the action. Filtrbox, a Boulder, Colorado based TechStars startup and previous TECH cocktail demoer, is looking to help you keep track of all the USA Teams' news by launching a new widget offering. The widget is not just your normal feed widget as it showcases the power of persistent search and noise control to offer up everything it can find about the USA Olympic team. There is lots of stuff from lots of sources ranging from NBC to bloggers point of view and everything in between.
The new widget launched is a desktop widget that runs under Adobe AIR, and a Flash widget for your blog. Both are totally free and easy to install. Check out the Team USA widget as you cheer Team USA on to gold or create your own custom widget based off your filtrs.
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