SOMEWHAT FRANK

Strategic Board Aggregates The IT World

Strategic Board recently appeared as a referring URL in a metrics report for Somewhat Frank and so I inquisitively investigated it further. It appears that this 10o percent Israeli start-up located in Tel Aviv is indexing not only Somewhat Frank but a large number of IT blogs in the blogosphere. According to Strategic Board's about page:

"Strategic Board is a Web 2.0 search engine that aggregates IT related RSS feeds. We automatically monitor and identify new IT related blogs. Today we already monitor 13,539 IT related sources with 329,322 IT related posts indexed."

The site has a tech.memeorandum feel but with is less appealing to look at with its gray tones and litter of Google Adsense links. My advice would be to remove some of the Google Ads to clean up the layout or move them into less prominent places. SB also offers code for a dynamic search widget that could be placed on your blog or website for up to date IT blogosphere activity.  Overall,  Strategic Board could be a valuable place to discover new technology happenings that high profile tech.memeorandum may have missed. For more information check out Strategic Board's blog.

del.icio.us Suffers Outage

It appears del.icio.us which was recently purchased by Yahoo is having some technical difficulties. I went to the site yesterday evening and it was down for maintenance. I visited the site early this morning (December 19, 2005)  and it is still down. However, the site was displaying this message:

"Due to the power outage earlier in the week, we appear a number of  continued hiccups. We've taken everything offline to properly rebuild  and restore everything. I apologize and hope to have this resolved as  soon as possible. Thank you for your continued patience.

Updates will be posted on our blog as we have them."

This is the second blog related online application that has had an outage in the last week (Six Apart was the other) which makes you start to question the reliability of these online Web 2.0 resources.  Not to mention, I wonder if some of the extended del.icio.us downtime could be a result of changes or integrations with Yahoo?

*Powerlines at Sunset image thanks to www.tonyboon.co.uk

Keys To Flipping A Start-up

Dare Obansanjo wrote a compelling post recently in regard to flipping a start-up company. Aside from the fact that building a start-up just to flip it may be difficult as mentioned in these posts by Paul Kedrosky and Jason Wood it appears to be the Web 2.0 trend these days. Dare highlighted three things that are necessary when planning to sell a start-up to the big four, AMYG (or AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google). These three factors are as follows: 

1.) Technology
2.) Users
3.) Human Resources (a.k.a. a super development team)

I agree with Dare that all three separately could add value to a Google or Yahoo. However, I feel Dare discounted having a user base 0r brand awareness. I feel that a brand coupled with excellent technology has value. Let's take Flickr who was purchased by Yahoo this year as a example. Flickr had a brand that people knew and liked for photo sharing thus had value not only in the technology but also in the brand. In fact, I have read many blog posts expressing displeasure at the changes Yahoo had made or will make to Flickr which shows me that Flickr as an online photo application has a loyal following. Could Yahoo put out something similar to Flickr on its own and gain such a following?

Dare also highlighted the trend of buying companies for the people that work for the company. For example, Flickr and del.icio.us in Dare's mind were bought by Yahoo to recruit the developers that created them. Is this true? I think it is and the human resource aspect is important.  However, is a Google or a Yahoo going to pay $1o0 or $200 million dollars for a few developers?

I truly believe that while technology and brand are both important. I think that a balance of all three factors is necessary to help flip your start-up to the big four:

"The strength of any company is in your people and the way that they leverage technology and not just the technology itself."

You can use people to build technology solutions and you can use technology to grow a user base and brand loyalty but it takes a lot more to develop good solid people that know how to leverage technology to create solid products. So maybe Dare is right in that people are the most valuable of the start-up flipping factors. What do you think?

Google Takes A Piece of AOL

Google had a big day today (December 17, 2005)  in acquiring 5 percent of AOL for $1 billion as reported by David Vise of WashingtonPost.com and Saul Hansell of the New York Times. The deal calls for advertisement sharing between the two companies. The most notable advertisements will be ads on Google search results that will display an AOL logo. Google has been the search provider for AOL for years but MSN was reportedly courting AOL to upend Google in the AOL search space. Today's move by Google will most likely solidify Google as the continued search provider and also could help Google leverage AOL to get into some of Microsoft's precious software business.

Is this a good move for Google?

For some blogosphere perspectives check out these posts on Philoneist, Dave Henderson's Blog and Basement.org.

Somewhat Frank Bookmarks (12.17.05)

aka Frank Gruber

Google to launch PCs

Google PCs are to launch soon in India...I wonder if they will be launching as a Beta?

Google Music Search Live : SEO Consultant Esoos Bobnar

Google Music search unveiled earlier this week and Esoos Bobnar weighs in on it.

WSJ/NYT say Google HEARTS AOL - The Jason Calacanis Weblog

Google acquire 5 percent of AOL and Jason Calacanis has no problem with that.

King Kong Week : 800-CEO-READ Blog

King Kong will most likely take over the box office this weekend with its technology driven special effects. I am going to try and see it tonight and will find out if it lives up to all the hype!

Small Biz 101: No one starts with a masterpiece : 37signals

37Signals offers some small biz/start-up advice.

Structured Blogging Will Flop : The RSS Blog

I do not agree. I think structured blogging has excellent utility to allow blogs to do things they have not been able to do easily.

Top Ten Web 2.0 Moments of 2005 : Web 2.0 Explorer

Do you agree with these top 2005 Web 2.0 moments?

GoFish Nets Deal With Tribune

Tribune has already used this technology on the first two new Metromix sites in Baltimore and Orlando. GoFish offered the most viable options for integration into Tribune's current content management platform since they offer their own API.

*King Kong image by orkreitz via Flickr.

TypePad Outage Contingency Planning

Today Six Apart's TypePad which hosts Somewhat Frank and thousands of other blogs was down for about 10 hours. I apologize to anyone that was trying to view the last week worth of posts on Somewhat Frank. Basically, TypePad had rolled my blog back to December 10, 2005. I was concerned that this outage not only would cause my readers to be frustrated and confused but I was also worried about losing content. Also in my work at the Tribune our blogs were also affected by this outage so I was helping to manage the chaos caused by the outage.

I took action by contacting Six Apart who owns TypePad first via the TypePad contact email address. I also took the liberty of contacting Anil Dash a VP at Six Apart to let him know. Of course he was already well aware of the issue and emailed me back apologizing for the inconvenience and emphasizing an understanding of the seriousness of the outage. I contacted Anil again via AOL instant messenger thanking him for his response. I am pretty understand about technology related issues due to my extensive technology background so I am somewhat sympathetic. However, I am sure other bloggers will not be as kind.

We will see how this outage ultimately tarnishes Six Apart's reputation. There are not really too many other options that offer as may features in a hosted blogging solution. I have decided I am going to stick with TypePad and see what happens. However, I have decided to change my operating/blogging procedures a little bit. Previously, I would post directly to TypePad without any backup system. Now I am testing out a few different desktop client software options that sync up with TypePad and allow me to save my posts locally prior to posting them online. That way I have a backup of my posts in case TypePad goes down again and loses data. I actually have written this post using w.bloggar a free software that allows you to create posts with the need of an Internet connection. Additionally, I have read good reviews about ecto another similar desktop blog software. For other options check out this post on Ian's Messy Desk which charts out many options. I hope Six Apart can navigate out of this bad PR day, maybe fellow TypePad user Steve Rubel can help them out with spinning this.

Check out TypePad's status blog for specific information about the situation. Also Niall Kennedy has cleared his Friday night schedule to set up post outside Six Apart to find out more details.

UPDATE: Check out Anil Dash's post on his  sh!tty day at TypePad. Also Niall Kennedy followed up his earlier post with an exclusive interview post.

Knight Ridder Digital Case Study At Syndicate

I sat in at my last Syndicate conference session yesterday (December 14, 2005) which was a case study by Knight Ridder Digital. Ross Settles of Knight Ridder Digital spoke about how they approached positioning themselves for the online medium. Additionally. Chris Tolles of Topix.net and Anil Dash of Six Apart were also part of the session and added their experiences in working with Knight Ridder.

Ross highlighted how KRD got help from Topix.net to identify verticals or categories that were traffic drivers but were being under exposed by KRD's previous strategy. Once these content light areas were determined, Ross and his team started to find ways to fill the content void in those areas with bloggers (using Six Apart), journalists and even content aggregation technologies (using Topix.net).

Out of the discussion the speakers were asked to describe/forecast the vision and role of a newspaper looking five years out.

According to his remarks at the session, the future of the newspapers in the eyes of Ross Settles five years out is one of more broad content creators, a.k.a. more investment to create content that you cannot get by just searching the web. He sees adding additional local content on local government and other areas of interest to a local user. Also he stated journalistic principles need to adapted and the data about the local market needs to be aggregated and tapped into more readily. Advertising information is important and is probably one of the most important things published. In closing Ross said:

"You should think of the newspaper as an institution and in doing so the physical presence gives a newspaper credibility to sell things locally. Newspapers should realize this and invest in it. Those that do not will probably go away."

Chris Tolles of Topix.net also expressed his opinion on the future of newspapers:

"There is a business to find out information that is not via a keyword based search. If you are looking for a particular thing. What should I know today? That is something could really be helpful. Information discovery is a whole different type of need to be met. I think newspapers could go this route. The innovators dilemma is that the news industry has created such an expensive institution to keep going as is."

Tolles drew references to the Worse is Better post about software development and how stuff that is built lousy is easier to fix. This idea transcends into Web 2.0 principles to as seen in the ever present Beta. This idea of flawed or "worse" products makes it difficult to compete on a level playing field since publishers including newspapers are institutions that thrive on accuracy and being better. Additionally, Chris Tolles said:

"The newspaper business will be altered and augmented by things that are not better. Newspapers will never die. They will just need to learn to adapt to continue to position themselves as a viable resource."

He has a very good point. I agree with him, so it really is just a matter of positioning a newspaper site to offer the most value to your users needs. Users first, more or less.

Podcasting Discussion At Syndicate

The future of podcasting was a huge center of discussion at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco in the session titled “Podcasting: The Challenges of Audio Syndication.” The session was moderated by Doug Kaye of IT Conversations and the panel was speakers were Evan Williams of Odeo, Rick Klau of FeedBurner and Joe Hayashi of Yahoo. Several great questions were asked and answered on podcasting and here are three questions I wanted to share.

What is the ideal length of a podcast?
The general concensus appeared to be that “it really depends on your goal or objective.” Though all speakers thought that due in part to the additional time it takes to actually listen to a podcast it is probably a better rule of thumb to be on the short format then the longer. Rick Klau of FeedBurner had an excellent example, in saying that, he can get through several hundred headlines feeds in his RSS aggregator relatively quickly while it would take him a lot longer to get through a handful of audio podcasts. He has a great point. It just takes longer to listen then read or surf through content. So once again, a shorter formatted set of audio items in a podcast may be more attractive to users looking to surf through several audio feeds relatively quickly.

What are some ways to find new podcasts?
Evan Williams of Odeo felt that actual websites and blogs will continue to be places that users find and discover new podcasts, therefore it stresses the importance of distribution sites. Joe Hayashi of Yahoo who was part of the development of Yahoo’s Media RSS standard believed that community tools was the best way to help users find new podcasts. In using community tools, he felt the good podcasts would float to the top and be recommended by other community members aiding in the search and discovery process. Other search and discovery sites that were mentioned by the group were podscope, blinkx and Podzinger which is a BBN Technologies site.

How do you monetize podcasts?
The group seemed to agree that monetizing is still in its infancy but currently sponsorship appears to be the best way to monetize at least until we see maturation in the infrastructure to allow other revenue streams in podcasts.

Here is a prediction by moderator Doug Kaye:

"There is a going to be a significant opportunity for video podcasts to monetize."

I agree and think that is almost a "no brainer" when you realize that companies are starting to be able to provide better metrics on podcast distribution and listening/viewing statistics. As these metrics systems continue to develop it will create a solid base for podcasters to present solid numbers to advertisers which will help facilitate advertising sales to both video and audio podcasts.

FeedFlare: Interactive RSS By FeedBurner

We have all heard of flair, whether if be via the movie Office Space or the actual emergency flares you use when you are in distresss. Today, flare has a new meaning since FeedBurner announced a new web services product called  FeedFlare. The FeedBurner blog Burning Questions discusses FeedFlare here.

What is FeedFlare?  It is a set of web services that allow interoperability between a feed item and the web. Basically, it allows you to place  additional real-time information into an exisiting feed item.  According to the the FeedBurner blog the new option will allow feeds to carry the following seven tidbits of  information:

• most popular tags for this item via del.icio.us
• tag this item at del.icio.us
• Technorati cosmos: number of links to this post
• Creative Commons license for this specific item. This works even if you are splicing, say, a Flickery photo feed into a blog feed and the two parent feeds have different licenses associated with them.
• number of comments on this post (currently only for feeds created by Word press)
• email this item
• email the author of this item (particularly helpful if the item ends up spliced into another feed or re purposed on a site).

Additionally, FeedBurner has announced that it will be opening up its API to allow for others to add features to this new web services product. The sky is the limit for the amount of interactivity a feed could now carry. I have added these new features to my FeedBurner feed and hope that they add additional value to you as shown in the image to the right.

For more of the blogosphere buzz on the FeedBurner announcement checkout these posts on Tech Crunch, Read/Write Web, Niall Kennedy, Junto Boyz and Stowe Boyd.

Tuesday Evening @ Syndicate

Just a quick recap from Tuesday evening (December 13, 2004) at the Syndicate Conference. After the structured blogging announcement I blogged about previously on SwF, I headed to the Yahoo networking reception where I had the pleasure of finally meeting Niall Kennedy of Technorati and Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. These are just couple of gentlemen I have interacted with online but never got to actually meet in person. Additionally, Michael was snapping some photos and caught my ugly mug in this photo with a new acquaintance, Jennifer Allen, from  Eurekster. Ironically, I have used Eurekster's Swicki product recently in a post on SwF titled What is Swicki? so it was nice to finally meet someone from Eurekster. 

I attended an after party in a penthouse suite filled with superb wine, port and scotch hosted by the good folks at Pluck (Dave Panos and company). At the after party I met several other Syndicate attendees including another midwesterner in Dan Hickey from Meredith Corporation (which owns Better Homes and Gardens among other publications). After a fabulous party by Pluck, I headed with some of my new acquaintances to the Cellar, a local establishment a few blocks away to attend a launch party for a new RSS Reader which incorporates some aspects of social networking called Gritwire. I met Ian Carswell the founder and COO of Gritwire and actually got a personalized demo. I found the RSS reader to carry many of the same features of any other reader. However, one thing I did find distinguishable was the fact that the reader was flash based which is different from the typical Ajax based reader solutions I am accustom to seeing. In watching the demo I found out Ian is a fellow Illinois resident since Gritwire’s office is in Evanston, Illinois which is where I received my graduate degree from Northwestern. As a door prize for for heading to the launch party, Gritwire gave out laptop bags as shown the left. A very nice touch. UPDATE: Ian has posted recently on the Gritwire blog in regard to the launch party.

After a long day I decided to wander back to the San Francisco Hilton and to get some much needed dinner from the Lobby Bar and then returned to my room to recap my notes on the day and check in with the blogosphere. A blog post later, I finally, got headed to bed after an eventful day at Syndicate.

*Images provided by Michael Arrington, Andy Kaufman and Scott Beale via Flickr

Structured Blogging Initiative Showcased At Syndicate

Salim Ismail CEO of PubSub announced via press release the structured blogging initiative that was eluded to in the Syndicate SF event schedule. I just got back from the announcement and basically structured blogging is soon to be its own non-profit company  set out to create a standardized way to add more valued meta data to a blog  (i.e. reviews, listings, events, audio). They do this by offering a plug-in that works with Moveable Type and WordPress that allows users to add structured data to blog posts. In doing so blogs will be able to produce additional meta data for search engines and users to tap into. These structured blogging techniques will allow additional RSS output as well. Many companies are supporting the initiative, including Micheal Arrington of edgeio, Dave Panos of Pluck  and Mary Hodder who spoke of her use of structured blogging with a new product called iTags. The full list of supporters can be found here. 

During the Q&A session Niall Kennedy threw up a red flag as he determined that the current RSS output that this new structured blogging standard was outputting was not valid with the W3C  validator standards for RSS. The flaw was addressed by the structured blogging team by simply saying:

"We will fix it."

Standardizing blog RSS output on events, listings, reviews and audio components is not going to be easy however, I give them a huge amount of credit for the effort and would be willing to help them if necessary in any way I could. I think it is an extremely important effort for the improvement of the blogosphere. Visit structuredblogging.org for more information.

Additionally, I hope to see more hosted blog platforms like Six Apart adopt these  structured blogging features into TypePad. However, it appears they may already be moving in the right direction with their Comet product however it may not be exactly the same thing as structured blogging. I know Reger.com is already offering datablogging and they are on board with this effort, so I hope others will be soon to join the standardization effort.

David Sifry: Unveils Technorati Kitchen at Syndicate

David Sifry the CEO of Technorati just spoke on "Searching the World 'Live' Web" at the Syndicate SF Conference. In his presentation briefed everyone on the state of the blogosphere by saying:

"Over 70,000 new weblogs are created everyday...the blogosphere averages 900,000 to 1.2 million posts a day...this is about 12 to 15 posts per second."

David was an excellent speaker and went on to say that the challenge of integrating user generated content with mainstream media can be overcome by linking to bloggers similar to the way that WashingtonPost.com and a handful of other online news sites have. Now this idea at first glance gives online news editors and GM's chills, since they do not want to send users away! However, what David and Technorati has seen is that when a blogger realizes that they are being linked to by a larger fish in the media sea such as the Washington Post.com, they will continue to go back to the Washington Post.com and link to more of their stories to continue to generate the traffic they initially experienced.  Also these bloggers will help promote news stories in a decentralized fashion which should increase web traffic back to the mainstream media site by 2 to 5 percent. Not bad!

David also touched on how hyperlinks or inbound links to a blog help to determine authority on a subject. He highlighted the "The Magic Middle" which are blogs that have 30 to 1000+ inbound links. Somewhat Frank falls into this category. A blog with less then 30 inbound links is considered part of the long tail.

Finally, David Sifry unveiled a new site called the Technocrat Kitchen which is a site that allows users to explore some of things that Technorati has currently in the Alpha phase (as in, not even Beta yet). You can visit the site by going to: kitchen.technorati.com
In my initial look of the site it appears to offer another way to search. The search has first categorized blogs by the tags that are associated with them via Blog Finder then offers links based on authority by topic. I need to explore the new site more thoroughly and will do so soon but need to get to the next Syndicate speaker.

Doc Searl Kicks Off The SF Syndicate Event

Doc Searl the Syndicate SF Conference. Doc spoke of how Dave Winer "badgered" him into blogging in the Fall of 1999. Doc noticed that fall when blogging just started to take of as the beginning of the "split of the web" from the use of the static web to the dynamic or "live" web. This is an entirely new environment that has brought syndication to the forefront due to its ease. With syndication anyone can produce content. However, Doc mentioned:

"Syndication is so new that we don't even know all the rules yet."

He is right.

*Image originally uploaded via camera-phone by Somewhat Frank.

In San Francisco For The Syndicate Event

I made it to San Francisco safely and checked into the Hilton hotel downtown. I checked in with the office then headed out to get a late lunch and my first real meal of the day. I found an Italian restaurant called Puccini and Pinetti which just happened to have happy hour starting as I entered. So I feasted on $3 appetizers which included pasta nachos and the pizza of the day. Today's pizza of the day was pineapple with chili pepper. It was the perfect blend of sweet and hot. I loved it. I washed it down with a few Stella's.

I picked up a Syndicate conference program upon my return from my late lunch and prepared my schedule for tomorrow which begins with a kickoff by Doc Searl at 8am.

*Image originally uploaded via camera-phone by Somewhat Frank.

Enroute To San Francisco Syndicate Event

I am well on my way to San Francisco for the Syndicate conference aboard a Boeing 767 United Airlines aircraft. I took this photo while watching the movie Cinderella Man somewhere over Nevada.

*Image originally uploaded via camera-phone by Somewhat Frank.