Last week I traveled to the Midwest to Champaign, Illinois to speak to a group of entrepreneurs about building brands and social media as covered by the Champaign News Gazette and to host another TECH cocktail. The event was sponsored by Wolfram Research which is based in Champaign and has been creating products like Mathematica for over 20 years. Wolfram Research recently received quite a bit of buzz on TechCrunch, GigaOm Network, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable among others for the launch of the consumer facing product called Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a the computational research engine that helps to find anwsers to questions that don't exist on the Web. I got a chance to visit with Co-founder, scientist and author, Theodore Gray and discussed the lastest from Wolfram Research. Check out the video interview with Theodore Gray (above). It is episode 82 on the SOMEWHAT FRANK Video Adventures Podcast which is available on iTunes.

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How important is influence on the Web? My friend Micah Baldwin recently called Influence the New Hotness. I agree, Influence is hot and it is nothing new though the currency has changed. Just a few years back the most important currency was incoming links to your website, now it is real-time re-tweets via Twitter or "likes" on Facebook's news feed. The social tools today are enabling people to influence the Web via real-time communications. With Twitter being a hot tool that is empowering people to influence others, I was curious to see just how influential I am on Twitter. Thanks to Filtrbox you can now answer that very question by simply entering your Twitter username and clicking submit. Filtrbox just launched the Twitter Influence Checker today and I got chance to give it a try. It turns out my Twitter account @frankgruber has a Twitter Influence score of 8 out for 10.

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I have covered a number of start-up companies in my day as I offer my somewhat frank opinion, insight and candid perspective in my quest for new products and services or "shiny objects" as I like to call them.This past weekend I got a chance to take another look at a different kind of start-up, one that goes by the name of ELEW (or ELEWW on Twitter). ELEW is powered by the thunderous energy of jazz pianist Eric Lewis as he has been innovating on jazz as we know it. Eric Lewis has created a new niche which takes alternative rock hits and brings them to the piano. But what makes Eric unique is that when he plays these tunes they sound like he is being accompanied by an orchestra. So why is Eric Lewis so interesting? Eric's approach to jazz is an innovative one that reminds me of a start-up. Eric's disrupts the traditional jazz system in a way that could fuel some heated debates, similar to how start-ups can disrupt the flow of business as usual. Eric has also created a recognizable set-list which helps ensure people can relate to it. This is similar to the way a startup is successful; it is important to have a clear story that is easy to relate to. Eric also has carved out a niche that did not previously exist, which reminds me of the way Twitter and other start-ups have created a need that users did not even know they had. Eric Lewis, or ELEW as he likes to refer to his band, is like a rising start-up and I will enjoy continuing to watch his popularity grow, just like I have watched Facebook, Twitter and others grow up and become mainstream.

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I got a chance to talk with Peter LaMotte of Washington, DC based startup GeniusRocket this past March right after the much debated "Is Spec Work Is Evil?" panel session at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. We discussed GeniusRocket's mission and take on crowdsourcing. GeniusRocket also has an interesting crowdsourcing story about the creative video that SXSW used this year which Peter will also share. This video interview with Peter LaMotte got lost in the SOMEWHAT FRANK video queue but I just found it and wanted to share the video as episode 76 on SOMEWHAT FRANK. I hope you enjoy our pre-coffee talk at the Crepery in Austin, Texas about crowdsourcing.

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I am excited to be speaking at Bootstrap Maryland Conference today on the campus of University of Maryland. My panel session is at 11 a.m. EST (shown below) has a great cast of local folks and we will look to help start-ups and entrepreneurs understand what you can do to get your message about your product, brand or service out there. How to market inexpensively with social media, events, and creative public relations Confirmed Panelists: Aaron Brazell, Peter Corbett, Frank Gruber, Kaitlyn Wilkins (moderated by Mario Armstrong) I will be streaming some videos live for the event via qik (below) so stay tuned to SOMEWHAT FRANK on Qik. Stay tuned.

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It was a pleasure as always to get a chance to sync up with Greg "The Trend Junkie" Cangialosi the CEO of Baltimore-based Blue Sky Factory in San Francisco today. I had him swing by to do his Thursday afternoon live show BlueSkyFactory.tv from the Bebo office. Frank Gruber & Greg Cangialosi at Bebo in San Francisco We discussed a number of topics including start-ups, shiny objects of the Web, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, building community anywhere, TECH cocktail, SOMEWHAT FRANK and my recent work at AOL as part of the People Network group which includes AIM,Bebo, ICQ and Socialthing and life-streaming products. We are also were joined by Jean-Paul Cozzatti the Development / Product Engineering Lead at Bebo to talk about the updates for Bebo that went live this past December and February as well as a hint as to what is to come in the coming months. Tune into the video above to watch episode #7 of Blue Sky Factory TV (above).

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It's true, SOMEWHAT FRANK was once named a "must know" blog for any Israeli startup as I have covered a number of them in the past. Every year a dozen or so, of these startups tour Silicon Valley as part of the IsraelWebTour, an event organized by the California Israel Chamber of Commerce. Last year, I was able to attend the demo day and I was impressed with a number of the Israeli companies and shared this video. It's that time of the year again and I wanted to highlight the 10 Israeli Web startups participating in the 2009 tour.

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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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SocialVibe allows you to "Get Sponsored" by your favorite brands on your social profiles while earning points for the reward of your choice. Though based in Los Angeles but I got a chance to talk with Sarah Townsend from SocialVibe for a quick impromptu interview at South By Southwest Interactive. Check out episode 74 of SOMEWHAT FRANK as we talk about SocialVibe and how it can be used for social good.

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I was in Santa Monica last month so I decided to stop by new startup called Tsavo Media. Tsavo Media was founded by former AOL colleague and Userplane founder and CEO, Mike Jones. He assembled a super team including Mike Macadaan (Twiistup founder and former AOL colleague), Sean Percival, Ryan Sit and Steve Schepke, among others. Tsavo Media has been funded by American Capital and has been gobbling up a number of niche content sites including NibbleDish along with creating niche sites like KidGlue, Manolith and Twirlit. With the launch of Daymix, a search experience which creates the "perfect page" for any given search term, we may be seeing the beginning of a relevancy engine. So what are they trying to do? According to Tsavo: "These are blogs that get to know you. Entertain, inform and serve you. They’re good for consumers, and great for advertisers." Curious to find out more details about these blog that appear to learn from your actions to better entertain you, I recently talked to Mike Jones and Mike Macadaan as I toured the Tsavo Media office space in Santa Monica, California. Check out SOMEWHAT FRANK video episode 68 (above) as go behind the scenes at Tsavo Media.

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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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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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Today I was pleased to see that Worth 1000 the New York based startup has launched Aviary the suite of online design tools I previously previewed into public beta. Aviary's public launch offers a refreshed look from that of the private beta and currently consists of Peacock (visual laboratory), Phoenix (image editor) and Toucan (color swatches). Aviary also offers an upgraded version which includes Raven (vector editor) and Talon (screen capture) for only $9.99 a month. This is a pretty powerful set of online tools for designers and artists. Aviary's social features allow users to explore the communities image creations. For example, this goldfish creation (below) caught my eye. There are lots of others like it and you can use Aviary to create your own lovely pieces of work.

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Yesterday I kicked off the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) in Vegas conference with a keynote discussing social media and my somewhat obsession with the shiny new objects of the Web. I shared my thoughts, antidotes and social media stories in hopes to help both explain and motivate the crowd into taking action. I also mentioned a number of products that I like to use and refer to as "shiny objects of the Web." After barely sleeping at all last night due to the Vegas oxygen rich air and just sheer excitement about the speaking event I was pretty pumped up and tried to wake up the crowd with a number of little ditties including singing Wheels on the Bus go round and round, sharing some fun stories and having everyone scream OPRAH at the top of their lungs! It was a BLAST! Below is some instant feedback I got via Twitter from some of the attendees. Be sure to check out the video (below) for clips from the address. Finally, you might find the extensive list of "shiny objects" in the lower portion of this post to be extremely useful. Bookmark it, share it or print it out and put it on the refrigerator or make it into a paper airplane but most importantly have fun while doing it. Social media is life.

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If you have a number of computers and are constantly switching between them you might run into a situation where you cannot keep straight which computer you are saving files to. Syncplicity looks to help solve this problem by creating an application that installs on one computer and syncs all your documents, photos, and music by backing them up online with remote access and history. If you install it on additional computers it will synchronize your files so that you have access to all your files across all your computers. Currently the product is available for PC users with a MAC version in the works. I cannot wait to check out as it sounds like a great complimentary service to MobileMe as it helps to bring your files with you and it even backs up and sync your photos from Facebook and your Google Docs.

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