SOMEWHAT FRANK

TECH cocktail Is Coming To DC

I am happy to announce that TECH cocktail is coming to DC in May! Coming off a great event in Chicago a couple of weeks ago we are excited to be co-hosting TECH cocktail DC 1 (TcDC1) on May 17, 2007 from 6 to 9:30pm at MCCXXII, a sweet venue in DC. Demo and sponsor details will be coming soon...as we still have a few demo & sponsor slots open, so if you are interested please contact me ASAP. 

The event is open and FREE to bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and other business professionals interested in the technology arena in under served technology communities. Our goal is to help to amplify the technology and entrepreneurial signal in under served markets and have fun doing it.

Co-founders Eric Olson and I will be co-hosting TcDC1 with Nick O'Neill, a DC blogger, web developer and area native. Also special thanks to colleagues Jim Simmons & Omar Miskinyar for helping to coordinate securing the venue - that was huge!

If you are interested in attending please sign up now since you have to be on the guest list to be admitted to the event: http://techcocktaildc1.eventbrite.com
I hope to see you there! 

Popular Web 2.0 Video Explained

A few months ago, I highlighted an inventive web 2.0 video titled, "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us"  by Kansas State University anthropology professor Michael Welsh. The brief article I wrote ended up on the Digg homepage which ultimately lead to its mainstream discovery - at last count over two million people have viewed the video.

Professor Welsh was in attendance at the Web 2.0 Expo this past week and spoke at the Web 2.Open, a platform for open discussion on a topic of their choice. The professor decided to explain his video and YouTube user brickysponge recorded the discussion.

After A Long Web 2.0 Week: How Much Time Did It Take Off Your Life?

After a long week of traveling from Chicago for TECH cocktail to San Francisco for a week of Web 2.0 Expo events as explained by Mike Arrington, I feel like I may have shaved a few days off my life. Is there a way on the web to find out the impact of this week of sleepless nights and long days at the expo? If you’ve ever wondered just how long you’ll be taking up space on project earth, several sites are available to project how long you will could live. Based on how you complete a series of lifestyle questions, the sites calculate a projected age you will live to celebrate, or put another less popular way, your death age.

Internist Dr. Michael Roizen is a pioneer with health related questions to determine how one’s daily habits contribute to their good health with suggestions on how to live longer. At Dr. Roizen’s Realage.com you can calculate your “real age” based on your lifestyle, eating and drinking habits, and even how often you floss your teeth.

If you want more information, including how long you will live, (and why would you really want to know that?) you can log on to LivingTo100.com for those under 50 years of age, and to Eons.com for those older then 50. Each site walks you through a series of questions on health, diet, exercise, family, attitude, etc. and then calculates how long you will live.

So keep eating the broccoli, taking the vitamins, blogging daily and having fun you should live a long and happy life on the web.

Photo Attribution: stephcarter via Flickr

Print 2.0 Goes Moo

While standard businesses are not going away anytime soon Moo has been a web 2.0 cultural innovator. If you have been around the web 2.0 scene at all you know exactly what I am talking about. Moo, a London-based printing company, has created a new trend in business cards that measure 28mm by 70mm called Moo cards.

So what is the big deal? Moo cards allow users to create mini cards with a personalized card back that can display an uploaded or imported photo - this makes each card even more personalized and unique thus making exchanging business cards a more memorial experience for all parties involved. Moo has created a place for anyone looking for some business cards to easily create reasonably priced yet memorable business cards.

Aside from business cards, Moo launched NoteCards today at the Web 2.0 Expo. In talking with Moo CEO Richard Moross yesterday I got a little demo of the new NoteCard product that doubles as a standing photo. Moo makes it easy to add your photos to personalize your Moo NoteCards which measure 100mm by 100mm.

Though Moo may not be considered a web 2.0 company, they have recreated business cards and now personalized card thus influencing web 2.0 culture. Print 2.0 goes Moo like a purple cow.

Google Acquires DoubleClick, 10 Hot Startups, Social Aggregators, FoundRead Born & Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us

Photo of the week: This San Francisco Trolley photo taken by, friend and co-founder of TECH cocktail Eric Olson, was the first photo I found on Flickr related to the Web 2.0 Expo this week in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.15.07

The Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us
I just arrived in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It should be an exciting week of sessions, demos and launch parties in the city by the bay. If you are in town and want to meetup tonight (Sunday) check out this little meetup but keep in mind, this is NOT a TECH cocktail event like the one we just hosted in Chicago - it is just a meetup in SF.

Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
Makes sense as Google is truly an advertising company. Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. That is a lot of cash. Rumor has it they are buying the Internet just after the 2016 Chicago Olympics. :-) 

Birth of the Social Aggregator
Social Networks, Blogs and Startpages have long been treated as separate categories of web-based applications. According to Widgify, it is about to change. 

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups To Date
Rev2.org lists its take on the most successful web 2.0 startups. With FeedBurner’s domination of the feed management space I would probably add them to this list. But you probably know already I am a FeedBurner fan.

New RSS 2.0 spec site deployed
Dave Winer has been working on a project to "future-safe" the Harvard site that houses the RSS 2.0 spec. Yesterday, he redirected from the old site to the new one. Congrats Dave on the new site! 

Search for People Across the Social Network Sites
yoName is a search engine that allows you to search friends (not just) on these 6 big networks. 

Introducing FoundRead
GigaPapi GigaOm is at it again as he has launched FoundRead, a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Great idea Om, congrats on the launch. 

Hot Startup Checklist: Spam A Lot?
An interesting chart of Valleywag (masters of the pie charts, graphs, slides, etc.) highlighting some of the most promising startups.

Death to DRM, Future of RSS, AOL'Sphere It Widget, Zillow Relaunches, Blog Search Wars, Google My Maps & P2P Loans

Photo of the week: robobunny by Courtney Brooke. Happy Easter.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.08.07

DRM-Free Music
EMI announced DRM-free music earlier in the week and now Microsoft is hinting at doing the same. Is this the death of DRM?

500 million+!!! AOL'Sphere Goes Live
AOL and Sphere quietly turned on Sphere It in their AOL News, Sports and Entertainment articles. The Sphere It widget is great - I have one too on all my posts as it offers users the ability to find related content. Love it. If you would like one for your site be sure to check out the Sphere tools.

Google Personalizes Maps
Google Maps launched a new feature to its maps product this week (April 5, 2007) called My Maps with offers users the ability to personalize a Google Map. My Maps enables anyone to draw, plot or color a Google Map without having to know an ounce of coding knowledge thus bringing simplified personal mapping to the masses.

Yahoo Testing Alpha (Beta) Multi Search
Search Engine Land covers Yahoo's launch of Alpha a new search experience. Alpha is really more of a multi-search tool that submits your query to multiple sources. It really reminds me of AOL FullView Search.

10 Things You Can Do With Mixed Media RSS
Marshall Kirkpatrick, of SplashCast Media, presents a list of ways to leverage mixed media feeds produced by SplashCast.  He provides big-picture use-cases and explains how you can use other products I have previously reviewed like Tumblr, FeedBurner, ZapTxt and Rasasa to create some interesting feed mashups.

The Future of RSS
Read/Write Web looks at RSS today and asks if RSS is evolving into a tool for delivering complex, semantically rich information. A great article for anyone looking for information on RSS.

Technorati and the blog search wars
Mathew Ingram dissects Technorati's recent state of the blogosphere. It is still interesting to see how fast Technorati.com has been growing: over 9 million unique visitors in March, up 141 per cent in a single quarter, and double-digit growth every month in page views as well. Not bad.

Financing Web Work with Prosper.com
Prosper.com enables peer-to-peer loans for startups and anyone looking to do their own thing. If you are looking for funding you may want to check it out.

Zillow Relaunch - Adds Its Own Q&A Service
Every home in the Zillow database has its own dedicated page. Any user can now also add photos and information about any home and its neighborhood to the site. Users can also indicate if a home is for sale, and the asking price, as well as additional info.

Weblin’s Avatars Surf the Web with You
Kristen Nicole reviews the recent launch of Weblin, a program that lets you create a web avatar that travels with you on your web journey. According to the article when you come across a site where there are other Weblins, you’ll be able to see them and strike up a conversation. Chatting avatars on the web - interesting!

iminlikewithyou, an interesting new look at online flirting
iminlikewithyou is all about flirting, well, the art of flirting. Users sign up for the service and answer a few basic questions about themselves. Photos can be added as well as other personal information to be rewarded with valuable flirting points.

Widgets Arrive for the iPod
The iPod is still largely a closed development platform, but that's not stopping some folks from creating widgets that run on it. Steve Rubel points to two products from Kooloroo that bring handy information to the iPod.

End of the Web's Free Ride?

End of the web's free ride? Doubtful. As a former Tribune Co. employee it was surprising to see the Washington Post article published today (April 7, 2007) saying that, soon-to-be Tribune Co. owner and real estate billionaire, Samuel Zell was set on trying to make news aggregators pay for newspaper.com content. Though Sam is quick to admit he is new to the newspaper industry, he was quoted saying:

"If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be? Not very."

In an age of an open, attention economy of syndication and new media, Sam Zell's direction seems so 5 years ago. Don't Google and other news aggregators provide a service to these news sources by sending them relevant traffic so that they can serve up their own ads and generate revenue? Yes. Mathew Ingram offers some additional perspective on this topic by saying:

"On the contrary, newspapers get a tremendous benefit from being indexed by Google News, just as websites get a tremendous benefit from being indexed by Google’s search."

Mathew is right on the money. Though Google has been reported to be paying for some of its Google News content, publishers have the power to restrict the amount of content that is syndicated and most newspapers do this by only syndicating a one sentence news brief thus sending most traffic back to the source site. While I do not know the entire context around Sam Zell's quote to make aggregators pay, I find it rather disturbing as it could land Tribune in some trouble if this philosophy is  applied, especially in a time when micro-publishers and citizen journalists with less overhead thus higher profit margin are out there covering the news.

It will be intriguing to watch what Tribune does with its content, I hope they decide to capitalize on the ad revenues from it rather than the revenue generated from aggregator rights. No disrespect to Sam Zell, he is a billionaire and I am not, but if I could give one bit of advice I would suggest he investigate the recent changes in the media landscape in regard to paid vs. free content strategies before taking the helm at Tribune. I would point to Washington Post Newsweek Interactive a competitor that "gets it" and could serve as a great role model for Tribune. I guess my point is, if Tribune is going to turn the clock back and dive into the old "people should pay for our online content" mindset then Tribune is totally f*cked - I would hate to see that happen.

TechCrunch Gets F*ckedCompany, iTunes Subscription Service, Baseball 007 and Spinn3r & BlogRovr Launch

Photo of the Week: Opening Day 2007 for Major League Baseball is today so enjoy the photo above by Betsy titled New hat, in honor of the start of the 2007 baseball season.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.01.07

TechCrunch Has Acquired F*ckedCompany.com
Playing a little April Fools joke? Will Mike Arrington come back with a follow-up post that says something similar to the lyrics of a Marshall Mathers song? Something like:

"Hahaha, I'm just playin' ladies. You know I love you."

In all honesty, it actually would make sense for TechCrunch to take on some other brands to expand its reach.

Apple Announces Unlimited iTunes Subscription Service
iTunes will launch an all-you-can-eat subscription service in June, according to sources at Apple Inc. The service, which will cost around $100 a month, will offer unlimited downloads of videos and music tracks from iTunes’ extensive catalog.

Dave Winer’s Scripting News Celebrates 10th Anniversary
One of the oldest blogs in existence, Scripting News, run by software and web pioneer Dave Winer, is celebrating its 10th anniversary on April 1, 2007. Congrats to Dave Winer for keeping it real for so long.

The 9 Essential Posts that Every Blogger Should Know
Do you ever get blogger fog (similar to writers block)? It could happen and this article addresses 9 post ideas you could fall-back options.

10 Most Popular Brands on Digg
Pronet Advertising looks at the most popular brands surfacing on Digg these days.

Love Doesn’t Equal Loyalty: Online Dating in February 2007
I recently became single again after a couple of year relationship so I figure it best I find out what is going on with the online dating scene since I just don't have the time to go out and find people to date these days - I hardly have time to get ample sleep.

Best New Mashups: Diversions
ProgrammableWeb has posted some interesting mashups that are worth checking out if you have some free time.

BlogRovr Fetches Content From Your Favorite Blogs
BlogRovr is an interesting new way of getting blog information, on the go while you're surfing the Web. It is a download plugin for Firefox 2.0, which works cross-platform on Windows, Mac and Linux. There is currently no IE plugin, but plans to support for IE6 and IE 7 soon.

TailRank Opens Service As A Platform
TailRank, a popular blog news organizer that competes with TechMeme and Megite, has opened up its back end and will provide the service as a platform called Spinn3r for application developers who would like to add a blog index and ranking service. Spinn3r is said to have a 1 million blog index.

Go2Web2 Blog Birthday Video

The Go2Web2 blog, written by Israel-based Orli Yakuel, is a superb blog that showcases interesting web 2.0 products a few times a week as it manually aggregates products to place in its web 2.0 directory, Go2Web20.net. The Go2Web2 blog just turned one year old yesterday (March 16, 2007) and to celebrate co-founder, Eyal Shahar decided to produce this video - it's a dandy. Happy blog birthday Go2Web2 blog!

Go Green Web 2.0 Style

As scientists recently drafted a report that describes a dire outlook for planet Earth, the effects of global warming on the planet have literally been a hot topic (no pun intended) and even made a recent stop at the 79th Annual Academy Awards. However, there are a number of environmental or "green" web sites focused on improving the situation. This article will showcase some of these movements that I have encountered recently.

18Seconds.org - Devoted to informing the world about the energy savings associated with switching from a normal light bulb to a compact fluorescent lamp. The campaign is based on the idea that is only takes 18 seconds to change a regular light bulb to an energy saving compact fluorescent light bulb.

EcoGeek - A site devoted to monitoring and exploring the current explosion in technology designed to mitigate our impact on the environment.

Greener - A search engine that could come in handy if you are looking for green products, services, organizations and information. Currently the green search engine boasts that it is search over 9 million sites and 50 million links.

greeninternet.org - As you surf the web, energy providers supplying power to your computer are burning fossil fuels and emitting harmful carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere. By pairing web surfers with sponsors, greeninternet.org looks to offset the environmental effects of surfing the web.

Gigoit - With the tagline of "Choose to Reuse" Gigoit offers anyone a place to get rid of unwanted items without having to resort to filling up a landfill. If craigslist doesn't work I would give Gigoit a try.

Hugg - Taking some inspiration for the popular web 2.0 social news site, Digg , Hugg offers users the ability to recommend green news to be rated by the rest of the Hugg community.

TerraPass - Helps counter the carbon dioxide emissions created by your lifestyle… and you don’t even have to leave your computer!  Just plug in your car’s information, your flight plans, your energy bill, etc. and TerraPass crunches your carbon dioxide output.  No it’s not just to make you feel guilty; this site also enables you to donate an amount to alternative energy sources to offset your damage.

TreeHugger - There are number of green blogs but if I had to pick on to stay tuned to for the latest in environmental or "green" news, tips and updates it would be TreeHuggers. TreeHugger recently partnered with Daylife to create The TreeHugger GRNDX which is the first "green index". It works like the stock market index, except that instead of tracking stocks, it tracks mentions of certain key green phrases in the media as a way to gauge how much mind-share certain concepts have week over week. TreeHugger offers number of other resources some of which include a set of how to go green guides which range from how to green your car to how to green you sex life.

Are you doing anything online to help the environmental movement and "Go Green?" I'm sure I left a few organizations or green products, out so please add others you know of in the comments section.

What Is In Your Tumblr?

Looking for a place to aggregate your thoughts in a scrapbook fashion online? Tumblr is a simple microblog platform and might be just what you are looking for to post your thoughts, images and videos. Tumblr offers a six different types of posts which include: a regular post, quote, photo, video, conversation and link. Unlike other conventional blog platforms, Tumblr does not offer comments, thus making Tumblr more like a one way log than a conversation. Eric Rice calls Tumblr a hybrid of twitter and WordPress, but it is more than just that as you can integrate a number of feeds and thus create your own customized personal aggregator.

Tumblr is a product of Davidville, the small New York web development firm that has also brought us Senduit, the simple file sharing product and Channel Frederator, the original cartoon podcast.

I created a Tumblr log called Totally Frank to aggregate my activities on Twitter, Stylehive, Last.fm and Flickr. You can find other Tumblr logs by tuning into the Tumblr Radar, an aggregation of recent Tumblr posts.

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.

Is Your Site Mobile Ready?

Is your site mobile ready? .mobi has launched, ready .mobi, a mobile-readiness test to help site owners. You simply put in your URL and using industry best practices & standards you find out if the site is mobile ready.  Unfortunately, Somewhat Frank is not currently fully mobile ready. You can visit the Somewhat Frank Mobile Version but it currently is only detecting and redirecting users visiting the site with Windows CE over to the mobile version.

Eric Olson previously wrote a piece explaining how to setup a mobile version of your site leveraging the FeedBurner BuzzBoost feature and simple server level http redirects. This method works wonderfully if you have server level access. Somewhat Frank is on Typepad, the SixApart hosted blog platform, and does not enable the same server level access as host it yourself solutions. Typepad does not  currently offer an out of the box mobile browser detection solution. I contacted TypePad support about it and JavaScript was mentioned as an option but no clear details were given so I found some JavaScript to handle Windows CE users. If anyone knows of other mobile redirect solutions that could be implemented on hosted blog platforms like Typepad please let me know.

Web 2.0 Online Identity Video

If you perform a search via a search engine like Google, Yahoo, MSN or AOL you can quickly check what the web has to offer about you. Our online identity is something that is established with time through our interactions online. I recently wrote an article showcasing the Web Profile Aggregators that help users to aggregate and take back their online identities by letting you play a part in how you are portrayed online. With online identity you can be anyone and you can have multiple identities depending on what you are doing online. The video titled online identity recently by staticfuror on YouTube or Captain Ryan on MySpace (see there are two identities right there for the same person, Ryan McGrady) offers some perspective on what having an online identity means in web 2.0. You can view it via SplashCast video player below.

Google vs. Microsoft, Hollywood Disrupted, OpenID Explained, BitTorrent Video Store and the Feed Reader Market

Photo of the week: With the 79th Academy Awards tonight I felt this photo title Over Hollywood Sign by Jorge Mir offered a good point of perspective.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.25.07

Hollywood Disrupted By Social Media?
An opinion piece in the LA Times, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”, explains how Hollywood is losing its place as the epicenter of cultural products and how movies are losing their relevance as the "barometers of the American psyche". Personally, social media has definitely pulled me away from more and more television and movies the last couple of years.

BitTorrent.com Launches Video Store
BitTorrent Inc, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing software, has released the final details of their long awaited video store. The store itself will go live this Monday, and will offer movie rentals at $2.99 - $3.99, and “download to own” TV shows.

It’s G-Day: Google Launches Apps Premier
Google has Microsoft squarely in its cross-hairs as it launched Google Apps Premier, its subscription package of premium, hosted business applications in direct competition with Microsoft. It does not surprise me. Interestingly, this past week I also heard a radio advertisement for "Breakfast with Google," an event setup to showcase Google @ Work for government organizations.

How does OpenID work?
Good question, this video post offers some perspective on just how OpenID works as explained by Simon Willison. Also Digg announced this past week that they are going OpenID.

How Many Founders Does A Startup Need?
Brad Feld looked at number of founders in successful Internet businesses. The average is 2.09 founders and Brad discusses this number and gives his input.

Netvibes2Go, Pretty Good Actually
GigaOm takes a look at Netvibes mobile experience and reports back on it. Basically, Netvibes setup is easy: create a tab in Netvibes called “Mobile,” and drop in some of these modules.

The State of the Web-based RSS Reader Market
FeedBurner released a great look into the feed market and Read/Write Web took it a step-further by examining the web-based feed reader market. The article also pulls in some numbers from another feed-based business called Pheedo.

Next Net: 25 startups to watch
Business 2.0 has once again listed 25 startups to watch in 2007. Here are last years 25 hottest startups.