SOMEWHAT FRANK

Happy BlogDay 2005

BlogDay was created by Nir Ofir in this post which had to do with how the year 3108 somewhat looks like the word blog which somehow sparked the idea. The day was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. BlogDay was declared to be celebrated on August 31st every year.

So in observance of BlogDay 2005 here are my five recommended blogs:

TechCrunch – Michael Arrington and Keith Teare do a very nice job profiling new technology companies as well as giving weekly reviews of happenings in 2.0 web business.

Napsterization Blog – Mary Hodder focuses on positive, fair-use and legal examples of peer-to-peer file sharing, digital media as well the decentralizing effects on old analog systems and institutions, and news ways digital media can bring together users and experiences.

Syntagma – John M. Evans writes on many topics of contemporary interest including technology, business, culture and life.

Online Marketing Blog – Lee Odden offers up to date news, resources and information on the search engine industry as well as tactics ranging from search engine optimization to blog marketing and online public relations.

Fighting Splog – Helps to fight against spam blogs or splogs that are clogging up the blogosphere and search engines by exploiting them on the blog.

The last blog I mentioned strikes close to home since I created a site called Splog Reporter with the help of Jeff Johns. The site idea was inspired by reading a blog post by Mark Cuban and then authoring this post on Somewhat Frank. In the spirit of BlogDay please check out Splog Reporter and help us in the blogosphere battle against splog! We even have buttons you can add to your blog to help promote the cause.

For more information on BlogDay check out creator Nir Ofir’s post today. Also check out the wiki he has set up for BlogDay. Happy BlogDay 2005!

Hurricane Relief Campaign Organized By McCormick Tribune Foundation

Hurricane Katrina has devastated the Gulf coast area of the United States in the past two days leaving many people homeless and living in flooded, unsafe conditions. The McCormick Tribune Foundation has taken action in organizing a hurricane relief campaign to help the victims of the latest hurricane. They will match the first $1,000,000 contributed at 50 cents per dollar. So basically, they will contribute $500,000 for the first million dollars. To help contribute to the Katrina relief campaign visit the MTF Hurricane Relief webpage.

Splog Reporter Adds A Firefox Extension

In case you have not noticed it yet on your own, Splog Reporter has added another way for users to report splog by creating a Firefox extension. It is our intent that this extension will allow users to personalize their Firefox browser to allow them to more easily report splog. We thought this would be especially useful to our users since we found that nearly 60 percent of them are Firefox users.

Let me know what you think about the new Firefox extension. I want to know. You can download it by going here.  Also, do you have other suggestions on how to improve upon Splog Reporter? I would love to hear them.

Human-like wakamaru Robot For Sale

Have you ever wanted to own your own robot like in the Jetson's cartoon? Well now you can thanks to Mitsubishi Heavy. They have created wakamaru a robot that rolls on wheels, is 1m tall, weighs 30kg, understands 10,000 words, and recognizes 10 faces. wakamaru was created in 2003 and won Good Design Award but is now on sale to the public for around $14,300 Yen.

wakamaru's was created with the goal of keeping a family household in order by providing information and support. According to the concept listed on wakamaru's website, wakamaru connects itself to the network using wireless technology to provide necessary information for daily life. It appears it relies on information from the Internet as well as programmed or memorized information to do so. It looks after the house while the family is absent, watches out for unusual conditions, and is convenient for the life of family members.

The robot  uses memory and camera technology to remember faces as well as to navigate through your house with ease. It remembers up to 10 faces based on a face recognition technology that uses an eye to look at a face and then plots points on that face to try and match it up with previously memorized face grids. As for navigating through your house it has a special eye on the top of it's head that allows it to look at the ceiling and then compare where it is in respect to a previously entered floor plan of your home. I wonder if it ever gets lost?

For more information on wakamaru check out this I4U News post and this post on Ilren Blog. Additionally, visit the wakamaru website here.

How Can Bloggers Protect Themselves From Lawsuits?

I recently saw on an post on Micro Persuasions that Aaron Wall’s of SEOBook.com is being sued  for comments that others made on his blog. This is a bit disturbing since we all write in the blogosphere using our first amendment rights as place to express our ideas on various topics. While I have heard of several bloggers who have been fired for blogging this is the first I have heard of someone getting sued for their blogs comments. What’s next, bloggers getting sued for trackback pings?

I did a bit of digging around and found the EFF’s Legal Guide for Bloggers which helps explain our simple blogger rights. Also I would urge serious bloggers to look into getting themselves into a situation where their blog is protected under a corporate umbrella of some sort. The books Own Your Own Corporation and Inc. Yourself are excellent starting points in the process.

Jack Johnson Jams The Lake Shore

Jack Johnson performed at the Northerly Island Pavilion on a beautiful Sunday evening (August 28th) in Chicago, Illinois. He sounded great in performing his mellow surfer inspired tunes.  I really like the pavilion on Lake Michigan however I wish the pavilion staff had left the main floor folding chairs instead of clearing them out making it standing only. A chair to lounge in would have been nice during the long evening of mellow music. Nonetheless, it was still a wonderful way to wrap up the last weekend in August.

Ryne Sandberg Day At Wrigley

For over ten years I idolized Chicago Cubs second baseman Ryne Sandberg for his class and brilliance both on and off the baseball field. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame with Wade Boggs earlier this summer but today the Chicago Cubs are retiring his number 23 to forever fly the foul poles of Wrigley Field.

I will be there to witness it and applaud. It is well deserved for a job well done.

For another fan perspective check out this post.

Visiting An Alpaca Farm

I recently took a drive up to Hartford, Wisconsin to Kettle Hills Farm and was able to escape the glow of the computer screen to be enlightened by a family running an alpaca farm. Previous to heading to this farm I had never seen an alpaca but knew they were very similar to llama's. Sesame Street brainwashed me to love llama's at a young age with it's pre-MTV music video to the song "Me And My Llama" but I was not sure how I would feel about alpaca's. Upon encountering the alpaca's for the first time I easily found a place for them in my heart just the same.

The mere size and temperament of the alpacas was unlike other livestock I had ever seen. They were very curious yet predictable animals. They appeared to me to be very tame and easy to manage in comparison to cattle or horses. For example, the farm I visited only used a simple three rung fence and the alpacas were not trying to escape. While my experiences with other animals from small beagles to a cattle had taught me that a three rung fence is not usually adequate in keeping an animal on your property. Furthermore, fully grown male alpacas only weigh at the maximum of around two hundred pounds which is light in comparison to hogs, cattle, and horses so I find their size appealing for safety and injury prevention reasons.

While on the farm I saw a day old alpaca (shown to the left) with it's mother. Also I learned that alpacas can handle pretty much any climate but in the
 summer they do get warm due to their heavy coats so they like to be cooled off a bit. So I was able to play sprinkler and water the alpacas with a hose. Finally, I also got to see the breeder of the farm in action with a couple of aplacas but I decided not to take photos. I figured it was pretty self explanatory.

Before departing I inquired about the alpaca business and it turns out it is often referred to as the "world's finest livestock business". This is due in part to supply and demand. The demand for alpacas is high and the supply is relatively low. I did some web searches and found the Alpacas Owners and Breeders website to be extremely helpful. According to the site supply will continue to be limited in the near future for the following reasons:

• Alpacas reproduce slowly. A female generally breeds for the first time between 18-24 months of age, is pregnant for 11-12 months, and almost always only has one cria per year.

• Many breeders retain their offspring to build their herds.

• The limited size of the national herds in each country outside of South America will restrain growth to a small degree.

• The U.S. alpaca registry is closed to further importation to protect our national herd, which will further moderate U.S. herd growth.

Additionally, alpacas provide three to ten pounds of fleece a year and can be sold to designers across the globe.  So there are excellent profit possibilities and tax advantages for alpaca breeders which makes them admirable investments.

So if I ever decide I want to invest in livestock, I think I would have go with alpacas.  They offer excellent investment potential, appeared to be easy to manage and were intriguing and beautiful animals.

Broadband Based Sports Sites Take Top Scores In Recent Survey

The University of Massachusetts-Amherst Isenberg School of Management recently completed its third study of 134 major league professional sites and found that baseball had moved up  significantly in fan involvement and interest into the top league position. The survey was led by sports communications professor Andy McGowan, the former director of public relations for the National Hockey League, with the help of 40 researchers and conducted with the assistance of the SportsBusiness Journal.

Using 40 questions, the survey analyzed content, fan interaction, web design,  and merchandise for sale with the approximately 50 percent of the overall score attributed to the content analysis questions.

While Major League Baseball uses the same framework and "look and feel" for all the the MLB teams, each specific team has control over the content of their site. The World Series Champion Boston Red Sox took top honors with their website coming in first in this years survey. While my beloved Chicago Cubs came in 29th overall and 25th of the baseball sites.

Here are a few of the other top finishers and their overall score out of a maximum 123 total:

MLB: Boston Red Sox (106.4324 to the Seattle Mariners' 106.4054).
MLS: Los Angeles Galaxy (98.2973).
NFL: Philadelphia Eagles (104.8108).
NBA: Cleveland Cavaliers (105.0541).
NHL: Atlanta Thrashers (102.6757).

Andy McGowan could not be reached for comment before the time this post was made.

For additional reading on the sports site survey check out the article on Poytner as well as the article on Internet Week. Also for a look a one of the past surveys results check out the link on the UMass website. Additionally, PaidContent.org did a post found here.

Talkr Converts Blog Text To Audio Podcasts

Talkr has just launched a new service that takes a sites articles or blog posts and converts them into a spoken word audio podcast. While I think this is an innovative service I found the voice that does the podcast reading to sound very much like a robot in some of its pronunciations. However, I have still decided to sample the service and have offered audio links for all of my posts. 

When I was setting up an account I got to the terms of service I found some interesting incentives for bloggers, though I think adoption of the service might be slow until a few improvements are made on the audio voice sound and quality to make it sound less robotic.
Check out these revenue share options from Talkr's terms of service:

"Talkr will provide the publisher with a link that the publisher may use to link to Talkr.  If the publisher implements this link, and one of the publisher's readers follows the link and becomes a paying subscriber to Talkr, Talkr will provide a revenue share back to the publisher.

Talkr will pay the publisher a base commission of $7 for each subscriber that maintains their Talkr subscription for at least 30 days.

In addition, Talkr will pay the following incentives for publishers that refer subscribers in volume:
o Greater than or equal to 10 subscribers in a month: +10% ($7.70 per subscriber)
o From 11 to 29 subscribers a month: +20% ($8.40 per subscriber)
o 30+ subscribers a month: +30% ($9.10 per subscriber)

If the publisher agrees to include audio advertisements in the audio files that Talkr generates, Talkr will share the revenue generated from those advertisements with the publisher: 50% to the publisher, 50% to Talkr.  Talkr will cover its costs to generate and host those audio files from its share of the revenue."

For another perspective on Talkr check out Lee Odden's post.

Fighting Splog Blog Joins Splog Battle

  Another blogger has joined the anti-splog crusade by launching the Fighting Splog blog which lists cases of splog abuse. This blogger like I did, "got so fed up with spamming in blogs" and took action. I applaud. Check out the blog if you get a chance and remember to report splog to Splog Reporter.

Webmaster World Pubcon 10 In Vegas Baby

Webmaster World has posted the conference information for PubCon 10  which will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center on November 15th through 17th. I attended the last Webmaster World conference in New Orleans in June and would highly recommend anyone interested in SEO, search, blogging, podcasting, website creation or online publishing in general to attend. It will be well worth the time and money you spend to attend. Not to mention it is in Vegas so I am sure there will be other things to do  if you do not find all of the sessions directly relevant to your purpose for attendance.

Check out the blog for PubCon set up by Brett Tabke. Also check out this post by Lee Odden further supporting the conference's value.

Google Talk Jabber-based IM Client To Debut

It has been confirmed by several news sources that Google's instant messenging software called Google Talk or GTalk is set to be released as soon as tomorrow (August 24, 2005). Check out this story on Instant Messaging Planet. Also check out the post on TechCrunch for screen shots and other Google Talk information.

Google Desktop Search Beta 2 Released

Google recently released a new and improved desktop search beta, Google Desktop Search 2. The search allows you to search your desktop as well as Outlook for items. The new beta has added a sidebar functionality that allows you to download plug-ins or create your own to  access email, news, photos, weather, stocks, and RSS feeds from that sidebar. While the content areas sound like the MyYahoo portal but leave it to Google to reinvent these functions making them easier for users to handle.

Editorsweblog.org offered a thought provoking post on Google and desktop search. It questions if Google is positioning itself with these products to learn and collect as much information as they can about their users. In doing so they then could offer even more targeted services in other areas. I personally  haven't downloaded desktop search for this very reason. I am a little leary of how much information Google is collecting on the various files on my personal computer. Does desktop search send information back to Google based on what is on my PC?

If you are not worried about potentially allowing Google access to your desktop you can learn more about the desktop search check out this Google Blog post. To download the new desktop search you can go here.

Splog Reporter Improves Functionality With New Look

The recent release of Splog Reporter was met with much enthusiasm. I received many suggestions and appreciated all of your feedback. The splog URLs have been flying in via the website. However, it did not take long to realize there was new functionality that needed to be added. So version two of Splog Reporter has been released with the assistance of my new counterpart, Jeff Johns, an extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable developer and resource.

The new Splog Reporter adds functionality that should improve overall usability by making reporting splog as simple as a two-click process. Splog Reporter has added a bookmarklet which can be placed on a user’s web browser’s toolbar or favorites. This feature should make it easier for users to report splog while viewing a splog website, though Splog Reporter is still offered in the previously released user-keyed method. Another new feature is the ability for users to enter a user name that will be associated to their email address. This change enabled us to create a point system for ranking splog reporter by the number of confirmed, reported splogs. I challenge you help clean up the blogosphere and see how many points you can accumulate. Furthermore, you can join the good-willed blogger movement by adding a splog reporter link to your blog as I did in my right rail. To get one for your site go here. Also you can check out this post by Jeff Johns on version two.