SOMEWHAT FRANK

Live Video: Personality Not Included Q&A

Watch and interact live over the Web! Today at 7 p.m. EST, I am chatting with Washington, DC local marketing/PR guru Rohit Bhargava the author of the new book, Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back. I am excited to be able to chat with Rohit tonight as part of the Network Solutions powered event that SOMEWHAT FRANK teamed up to host.   

I met Rohit last year as he moderated a panel that I sat on with fellow social media experts, Gary Vaynerchuk and Geoff Livingston. You can watch that video here, as I recorded it from a video camera mounted to my head. Interestingly, my three colleagues have all since published books - now doesn't that make me feel like a slacker. :) 

Personality Not Included is different from your typical marketing book and we are going to discuss it at this event. The actual event is sold out but you can watch it below thanks to BlogTV.

HumanFlipbook.com

Have you ever given a stick figure life with a flipbook? Erbert & Gerbert's has put its own spin on a flipbook by creating what they are calling the first ever human flipbook. It is posted at humanflipbook.com. It's a very artistic and clever way to passively promote the Midwest-based sub and club sandwich shop.

A Video Tribute To Internet People

There have been many people that have become "Internet famous" thanks to the shift to the user contributed content of Web 2.0. Thanks to the animation of Dan Meth, on his ChannelFrederator series The Meth Minute 39, we now can enjoy a tribute to all those viral video stars of the past couple of years.

Facebook Source Code Leak, Porn 2.0, Spock Launches, Personalize Jib Jab, Change of myAOL Heart & Startup Tips

Photo of the Week: A couple of Maine Lobstahs! from a surf & turf event I attended on Friday. It doesn't get a whole lot more "summer" than this.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 08.12.2007

Yoono Sharing & Suggestion Plugin

Yoono, a user powered suggestion community, will make it easy for its users to make more suggestions via the browser next week when it launches the "Buzz It" plugin. Yoono already offers browsing suggestions as you are visiting various web locations. The new browser applet will enable users to bookmark or clip interesting links, images, videos and photos from any web site and share them with others or publish them to a blog or MySpace page. "Buzz It" items are saved to a user's Buzzlog which can then be made public or kept private.

Yoono currently reports 600,000 users in its community and "Buzz It" offers them an easier way to share and annotate rich-media content right from the browser. For example, the screen-shot above shows clipping a YouTube video. In observing a demo of Yoono "Buzz It" from CEO Pascall Josselin I was impressed by number of features that Yoono offered. I also took note of Yoono's social aspects which could easily turn into a new social network for meeting people with the same clipping and browsing preferences. Yoono a dating site? Not really, but like any social networking site you can befriend new people through your interactions with  the product. As Pascall puts it:

“Yoono is a people aggregator, allowing everyone to capture and share personalized booklets of content along with their views, perspective and highlights...And, not only is It available from any browser, exportable to the PC, or sharable with others through RSS or email, data can also be printed, saved to the desktop, and published across their portfolio of online profiles, blogs, and networks.”

I think that pretty much sums it up as feature-rich Yoono packs a lot of punch. If you give Yoono a try, it is guaranteed to let you know what it does know in the form of recommendations and suggestions.

Sphere It Widget Aids Content Discovery

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 drives page views both for the author site as well as the entire blogosphere. The widget can be seen in the blogosphere on a number of popular blogs (i.e. TechCrunch, GigaOm, Andrew Sullivan Daily Dish, Publishing 2.0, Cool Hunting, Captains Quarters, Mathew Ingram, Read/Write Web, Battelle Searchblog, Venture Beat, O'Reilly Radar, Techdirt, Infectious Greed, etc).

Sphere's contextual widget is not only popping up in the blogosphere, Sphere has a number of partners (i.e. AOL, Market Watch,  NYT, ZDNet and TIME among others) representing nearly a billion article page views, which means Sphere is both reaching a much broader audience of Internet readers than just the early adopter tech crowd. Ultimately, Sphere and its "Sphere It" widget helps readers discover new blogs, and in the process drives page views.

The Sphere team was recently gracious enough to create a version of the widget for Somewhat Frank. It was added over the weekend and can be found at the end of each article. Upon clicking the "Sphere It" link an overlay dialog box should appear with recommendations and related content as shown in the screen-shot below.

With the "Sphere It" contextual widget you can be reading Somewhat Frank and click the widget for related content. You can then click one of the recommended blogs in the lower left quadrant to jump to Read/Write Web or GigaOm and then read one of their articles and click their "Sphere It" widget to bounce to the next site. I hope you enjoy bouncing around the web discovering new sites and content with the help of Sphere and it's "Sphere It" contextual widget.

Web Influencers, Netvibes Security Issues, AIM is #1, Go2Web20.net Revamped, Attention 200 & Design Geekery

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 help others to discover the hottest content on the web. These sites include Digg.com, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Newsvine – all of which empower users to submit content items from around the web. Items are rated and promoted via voting or other mechanisms within the site.The most popular or highest rated items bubble to the top and usually become even more popular as traffic surges towards sources of these hot content items. These social bookmarking sites are managed by a number of users but there are some key influencers that do the most consistent heavy lifting. WSJ put out a podcast to go along with the article and it can be downloaded here.

Netvibes module developer collects web creds, personal content
Niall Kennedy highlights how Netvibes, the personal homepage startup, recently experienced some serious security issues. Netvibes was recently praised by Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg, but it appears its open-source approach to development has left its users at the mercy of rogue developers. What does this mean? Basically, it means a rogue module developer could take advantage of Netvibes’ users to steal personal information like emails, bank information and just about anything else personal you might find in a homepage module. This is unfortunate for Netvibes as most of its quick growth and development is due to its developer network. I guess Netvibes will have to rethink its security and privacy approach if it or risk losing the trust of its users.

Wall Street Journal IM Ratings: AIM Is #1
What instant messaging product do you use? If its not AOL’s AIM 6.0 you may want to reconsider your choice as an article published this week in the WSJ titled "Rating the New Instant-Messaging Programs" compared AIM 6.0, Yahoo! Messenger 8.1, and Windows Live Messenger 8.1. AIM 6.0 was rated #1.

A Lesson in Viral Video
Inside Higher Education details the events surrounding the Web 2.0 video created by Michael Wusch which Somewhat Frank helped surface in the blogosphere. The article further emphasizes the viral power of the web and the influences of the blogosphere.

Go2web20 Relaunched!
The popular and slick web 2.0 directory created by Orli Yakuel has been revamped and relaunched with a number of improvements which should make the faster and easier to use. It should also offer more information for users. Included in the changes is the creation of a few innovative advertising options.

RocketDock: Add A Mac-like Dock To Your PC
If you are a Mac-lover stuck in a PC-user’s body then you might want give RocketDock a try. Lifehacker recently showcased it as a download of the day so I gave it a try. Upon installing the application created by Punk Software it instantly fulfilled my longing for a Mac-like dock for managing my desktop. Here is an instructional video which details the various configuration options of this nifty little add-on. Oh and buy some schwag or donate to support their development efforts.

31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online
If you are into tracking what people might be saying about you online you might want make sure you are checking a bunch of online sources. This article lists 31 places to keep your online reputation in check.

23 Signs That You're Becoming a Design Geek
While developing products I often find myself thinking I am a designer and I know I am not alone. I am admittedly not even close to the skill level of a full-fledged UI designer (like the designers I work with at AOL – they rock!). Nonetheless, this article will give you 23 design geek signs.

Announcing: The Compete Attention 200™
Compete recently posted a list of the top 200 online destinations based on their metrics tracking systems. Surprisingly, Somewhat Frank did not make the Attention 200 – this has to be some sort of mistake.  :-)

A Web Of Superheroes

So you probably have seen by now the slew of articles that start out "What superhero are you?", "What superhero am I?" or "I am <fill in the blank with a superhero name>." To further amplify the signal of this blogospheric chain-letter, I will participate in one final meme of 2006. A few weeks ago I was tagged for the "5 things meme" and participated by posting 5 things about me - this time it is the "superhero meme." Upon answering a number of random questions on a rather amateur looking, Google Adsense-heavy web site, I received the following results: 

You are The Flash

The Flash 80% Superman 75% Iron Man 70% Robin 57% Spider-Man 50% Hulk 50% Green Lantern 45% Batman 45% Supergirl 42% Wonder Woman 37% Catwoman 30%

Fast, athletic and flirtatious.

I guess all those years of childhood wearing superhero underoos have somehow paid off! Which Superhero are you?

Photo attribution: POSITiv via Flickr
 

Mix-Mas: A Virtual World For Sending Customized Holiday Greetings

With the holidays upon us hopefully you have sent your holiday wishes to all your family and friends. However, if you have not and you are still looking to send a holiday greeting you could send them a dancing elf greeting or you could give something a little more interactive a try. I recently was sent a greeting via Mix-Mas, a product created by Mantis, which brings holiday greeting customization and social interactivity to a new level. Mix-Mas is a flash-based web service that lets you send holiday greeting that all live together in a holiday greeting virtual world.

With Mix-Mas you can create a custom avatar to represent you in your greeting. The avatar will live in the Mix-Mas virtual holiday greeting world. While creating your avatar you can select from a number of options very similar to WeeWorld. A screen-shot of the creation screen can be seen above. After creating your avatar messenger you can send the greeting to anyone. I have created one here. Upon recieving the greeting you are directed to it in the Mix-Mas virtual world as shown below.

You will notice a number of other avatars which carry the messages as well. If you click on any avatar they will display their holiday message adding a web 2.0 social hook to the holiday greeting product. You can see my holiday greeting here or search Mix-mas by avatar name (i.e. Frank Gruber). If you still need more details check out this Mix-Mas video demo or by clicking the video below.

Bottom-line: Mix-Mas is a fun new way to send online holiday greetings. Create a custom avatar and send a holiday greeting today. Happy holidays!

Dance Like An Elf: Spread Holiday Cheer

Officemax has produced a suite of holiday themed micro-site flash applications with viral marketing in mind.  One of the applications in particular enables you to fulfill your holiday dreams. That's right you can dance like an elf on the Internet with Elf Yourself!

A friend of mine pointed the site out to me yesterday and of course I needed to immediately elf myself. Unfortunately, I don't drop to the snow and show off my break-dance moves but I still bust a move with the best of them.

The Officemax tab in the lower right corner of the site offers a view of the additional micro-site applications which all seem to be focused at spreading the Officemax viral email messaging cheer. Some of them include:

Reindeer Arm Wrestling
Yes I'm Working
North Pole Dancing
Don't Shoot Your Eye Out!

Check them out or just elf yourself and drop some slick dance moves in an elf costume today. Happy holidays!