June 3, 2009
This morning I learned about a pretty slick new Linux open source project called Moblin. Moblin has been around for a couple of years now but the new 2.0 version is now in beta and today at Computex Taipei there was an executive summit (video below) which helped me wrap my head around the scope and direction of the project. Founded by Intel in July 2007, Moblin started as a project looking to enable a new class of devices based on the Intel Atom processor. With the 2.0 version, Intel has handed the keys over to the Linux Foundation to drive this project to the next level as an open source platform of mobile computing.
Moblin 2.0 offers an open platform that developers can build on and see instant gratification by plugging into the Moblin myzone dashboard. The platform and dashboard reminds me of the iPhone application platform but for slightly larger more powerful devices. The myzone dashboard that aggregator a bunch of widgets of information into a startpage experience that is anchored by a tool bar across the top. The dashboard includes social features by sharing a lifestream are which pulls in information from sites like Twitter, Last.fm and Flickr. It also offers a status message system that is said to push updates out to your various social sites that revolve around status updates. Moblin also positions your videos, photos, music and calendar on your startpage.
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March 10, 2008
Kathy Sierra spoke yesterday at South by Southwest Interactive and shared some wonderful tidbits on how to "woo" users. I took some notes from the session and compiled them below. Kathy started out by saying creating a product:
"Think about ways to make your users really good at something."
She went on to explain by saying you need to work on creating a hi-res user experience. No one is passionate about something they suck at so making it easy to be awesome is a key to creating passionate users.
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January 3, 2008
I am a terrible speller. So when spell check is not available I turn to Google for dictionary options to ensure I am spelling them correctly. I recently found a simple and fast alternative called definr. Definr, just as it may sound, is an incredibly fast dictionary.
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March 20, 2007
We all have a number of contacts but how do you keep track of them all? Aside from an "old school" roledex, you could use the Microsoft Outlook or some other contact management software. 37signals silently slipped itself into the online contact manager arena with Highrise. Highrise is a simple...
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March 12, 2007
Sphere, the blog search engine that launched in May 2006, has been steadily disseminating and connecting the web via the "Sphere It" contextual widget. The widget has grown in popularity as it helps readers offer content recommendations from the blogosphere, as well as related content from current sites. It ultimately...
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February 11, 2007
It rained quite a bit this week in Silicon Valley so I thought this photo titled rain on tuesday taken by Daisy Romwall was appropriate. Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.11.07 The Wizards of Buzz The Wall Street Journal took an in-depth look at some of the social bookmarking sites that...
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January 7, 2007
It is time to start planning which conferences are going to attend in 2007. To make it easier I have compiled a list of some of the best web 2.0, technology, design, marketing and innovation conferences and events scheduled in 2007. This is meant to be a working list, so...
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January 2, 2007
Quintura For Kids launched just before the holiday rush to offer children a new way to search the web. Similar to the adult version of the Quintura visual search product, Quintura for Kids displays search results in addition to a keyword tag cloud. Quintura for Kids also offers children five...
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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 3, 2006
Snap an Idealab company located in Pasadena, California offers a product called Snap Preview Anywhere the ability to preview the links before you actually click them. I recently decided to add the feature to Somewhat Frank. With Snap Preview Anywhere links can be hovered over to display a thumbnail of...
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November 4, 2006
Quintura has taken its visual search engine to the web. Previously, a download-able search software application, Quintura has recently launched a slick looking web version that is powered by the Yahoo search. The search engine returns either web and image results in a, Quintura Cloud, a visual relationship cloud (similar...
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October 6, 2006
Innovation has become an extremely hot word in the last few years as companies work to push the envelope on the products and services. On Wednesday (October 4, 2006), I had the opportunity to listen to a brown bag discussion presented at the AOL Mountain View Headquarters. The event titled...
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September 29, 2006
MapQuest, the dinosaur of a now crowded field of online mapping services, has finally launched draggable maps. I wrote a map comparison review for TechCrunch in April 2006 and MapQuest did not fair very well in the navigational feature comparison. Draggable maps should at least put MapQuest back on the...
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September 6, 2006
Facebook launched a redesign today (September 5, 2006) which changed the layout of the homepage and introduced a few new features. The Facebook redesign introduced, "News Feed" which on the surface appears to be an excellent feature. It leverages the users attention to show the most recent activity of the...
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