SOMEWHAT FRANK

BlogBurst: For Bloggers and Publishers Alike

BlogBurst, a soon to launch product by Pluck, mines the blogosphere for solid bloggers and then offers their valued blog content back to publishers. So basically, Pluck is creating a blog network for publishers to grab solid blog content and place it on their site. Bloggers should benefit from the added exposure and publishers get fresh blogosphere content.

It is a win-win situation for bloggers and publishers alike!

I think BlogBurst a great idea and will offer an out of the box solution for online publisher and websites alike seeking blogosphere content. The product offers a way for publishers to leverage the power of the blog without having to find and manage their own in-house blogging staff.  I think this product has huge potential because there is a definite need by larger website and publishing companies to add compelling and relevant grassroots blogosphere content.

I saw Mike Arrington mentioned BlogBurst on TechCrunch today (February 18, 2006) so I took that as the go ahead to also preview BlogBurst since I have been anguish to mention it since December 2005. Dave Panos, Pluck CEO, was at the TechCrunch 5 Party last night and I assume was demonstrating BlogBurst as Mike mentioned. Pluck has not yet publicly released the product but I think you will be delighted to see the product when they do.

If BlogBurst sounds appealing be sure to sign up and get your blog posts in lights!

*Dave Panos photo thanks to Michael Arrington via Flickr

Chicago Wi-Fi Planning Underway

According to a recent report by the Chicago Tribune the city is looking to offer a free wi-fi grid to blanket the city of Chicago. This will help to bring Chicago up to speed with San Francisco [with help from Google] and Milwaukee two cities already moving towards implementing a wi-fi solution. Not to mention Miami, Minneapolis and Philadelphia are also all leading citywide wi-fi movements.

I am pleased to see Chicago is making an effort to offer wireless Internet services. It will be great to be able to head to the local coffee shop or book store not have to pay $10 for an hour of wi-fi Internet access. Though, it sounds like this project will take a little bit of time to materialize. Proposals are being accepted in spring of 2006, with a decision on a proposal coming in late summer or fall of 2006. This could mean that the actual wireless implementation is not started until winter of 2007.  In the mean time, if you are looking for free wi-fi service in your area you may want to read this post on wi-fi locating.

For additional blogosphere perspectives on wi-fi in Chicago check out these posts on Wi-Fi Networking News and The Kelsey Group Blog.

Naked Conversations: Blog Success Tips

I would highly recommend any PR, marketing or business professional to read Naked Conversations, a fairly new book by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. This book should help those professionals that are totally out of the loop on the blogosphere and the blogging phenomenon since it covers a brief history on blogging and introduces hundreds of blogging examples. The book examines cultural obstacles, business blogging strategies and a number of other topics. The book’s various examples might help you to come up with a blogging strategy for your business. Basically, if after reading this book you still don't get it, blogging, you probably never will.

Additionally, I wanted to highlight “Five Success Tips” for blogging as found on pages 78 – 80 of the book. I think they are important to understand and should be examined by any business or individual looking to jump into the blogosphere. The main success tips are in bold and I have added my own commentary to explain each:

Talk, don’t sell – You lose credibility if you are trying to sell on your blog.

Post often and be interesting – Easier said than done I know, but if you post once a day at the minimum you will have nearly 365 post in a year. Being interesting is the tougher of the two mentioned in this success tip. Be creative and interest should follow.

Write on issues you know and care about – Be the authority on something you love and are passionate about.

Blogging saves money but costs time – You can save advertising dollars by blogging…but you will pay for it in time spent generating compelling content so be ready for the time investment.

You get smarter by listening to what people tell you – Blogging is not a one way communication but a many to many communication. So allow your readers to respond and listen to what they have to say. You will be rewarded while opening your mind to new thought streams.

With the TechCrunch Naked Conversations Launch Party tonight (February 17, 2006) hosted by TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, I thought it was a great time to highlight the book in a blog post. I must admit, I am somewhat envious of those able to make it out to Arrington’s place tonight. Robert Scoble, co-author of the book, will be there as he has taken a travel day today. Enjoy the party and have a martini for me!

*Martini image thanks to MLHS via Flickr

Amazon vs. iTunes: Good Luck Amazon

Amazon is taking on music sales in a new fashion as they plan to go after Apple iTunes and capitalize on the iPod adoption phenomenon by offering music downloads according to a WSJ report. There are a number of perspectives floating around the blogosphere  about this strategic move by Amazon. Here are a few posts that I found had interesting views:

• Tech Digest
• Newsome.Org
• Internet Outsider

I feel like this is definitely going to be an uphill battle that will tax Amazon. They will have to offer a better product, cost savings and other incentives to users to make them switch from their current music provider. The biggest obstacle may have to do with format compatibility issues. If Amazon were to make it easy for a user to port over all existing iTunes music or even add music directly to iTunes from an Amazon purchase I feel they will have a better chance for success. Of course Amazon could take the alternate approach and try and put up compatibility barriers as Napster, iTunes and a few others have done in an effort to herd and lock up users. iTunes is already winning this game as the countdown to download number 1 billion is upon us. Good luck Amazon.

*Image thanks to xaraxone.com

Edgeio Depicted

There has been a lot of buzz in the last couple weeks about edgeio, the listing gathering product, set to launch sometime soon. The image above was found on Flickr by Mike Arrington. He made a post on the edgeio blog saying:

"I’m not sure how we feel about (it), but we love the passion emerging about edgeio"

I like to see this type of creativity in the blogosphere. Maybe the artist could come up with additional depictions. Themes could include the food chain, household pets, or even Dick Cheney firing away as the edgeio launch date approaches.

*Image thanks to Jorge en Sydney via Flickr

Campfire Launches With A Blaze

You may recall last week I came up with 12 ways to use the 37signals business chat application Campfire. Today Campfire officially launched (Feburary 15, 2006). According to the Campfire website with Campfire:    

• Every chat has a permanent URL
• Campfire chats don't require special chat software or networks
• Instantly share and discuss files with your colleagues or clients
• Search or browse through transcripts of past chats
• Chat securely over SSL (Plus and Premium plans)

Marc from O'Reilly's Radar had some interesting comments on Campfire in this post. To try Campfire visit Campfirenow.com.

UPDATE: Jason Fried weighs in on the launch on this Signal vs. Noise post.

Topix Maps Conversations

Topix.net was noted for making aggressive moves in 2005. The addition of a 'comments' link to every aggregated item 0n the Topix website coupled with adding blog posts into the mix were some of the more bold moves.

The Topix implementation of comments was done in an interesting fashion by placing submitted comments into a forum rather than attaching them directly to a story or post. The strategy behind keeping comments in a forum is now becoming more clear as I noticed today that Topix has added a map to plot the comment density across the United States thus displaying comments in yet another unique manner. This is a simple yet sexy feature that should produce additional interest in Topix comment implementation. Topix.net also captures the location information (via Zip Code) of site visitors and comment generators which gives Topix the ability to serve up localized comments based on the assumed location of the a visitor.

The new "Forum Activity" icon can be found in the right rail any section. Upon clicking on on the map icon a pop-up window that resembles a heat map is presented. Comments are plotted on a U.S. map with different colors based on comment recency. A set of comments in proximity to your assumed local area are also listed below the map.

Check out Topix.net to perform searches, leave comments and put your conversation on the map!

Google + MeasureMap = Blog Analytics

Google acquired MeasureMap, the blog analytics toolkit, yesterday (February 14, 2006). According to Google it plans to keep the same mission is tact:

"...to build the best possible user experience so people can understand and appreciate the effect their blogs - their words and ideas - can have."

MeasureMap is a creation of Adaptive Path therefore the employees that managed MeasureMap will be headed over to Google. Jeffery Veen is one of these employees and authored a recent post on the Google blog. It will be interesting to see how Google positions the new acquisition.

Blogs Grabbing Attention Over Big Media

David Sifry, the CEO of popular blog search engine Technorati, has released Part 2 to the State of the Blogosphere Part 1 release last week. Dave addresses the change of the online landscape and explains how some blogs are gaining more attention than some major mainstream media sites. Blogs like Boing Boing, Engadget and PostSecret are hanging with some respectable mainstream media company.

According to David’s latest post:

• Blogging and Mainstream Media continue to share attention in blogger's and reader's minds, but bloggers are climbing higher on the "big head" of the attention curve, with some bloggers getting more attention than sites including Forbes, PBS, MTV, and the CBC.

• Continuing down the attention curve, blogs take a more and more significant position as the economics of the mainstream publishing models make it cost prohibitive to build many nice sites and media

• Bloggers are changing the economics of the trade magazine space, with strong entries covering WiFi, Gadgets, Internet, Photography, Music, and other nice topic areas, making it easier to thrive, even on less aggregate traffic.   

• There is a network effect in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, with a tendency to remain highly linked if the blogger continues to post regularly and with quality content.

• Looking at the historical data shows that the inertia in the Top 100 is very low - in other words, the number of new blogs jumping to the top of the Top 100 as well as he blogs that have fallen out of the top 100 show that the network effect is relatively weak.   

• The Magic Middle is the 155,000 or so weblogs that have garnered between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. It is a realm of topical authority and significant posting and conversation within the blogosphere.

With time blogs will continue to take position on the mainstream media however, I do not think mainstream media will go away. I think blogs and mainstream media play off one another. Mainstream media is reporting more on items that turn up in blogs while the fact that bloggers can now fire back at mainstream media reports should only make the mainstream media reports better as they focus more attention t0 reporting accurate news and accounts.

*David Sifry image thanks to Mutually Inclusive

Technorati Adds Authority Search Filter

Technorati recently rolled a new feature into its search results sets that allows you to filter the results by authority.

What is authority? According to Technorati:

Technorati calculates a blog's authority by how many people link to it. Filtering by authority is a good way to refine your search results. There are four settings (left to right):

1. Any authority. This will show all results.

2. A little authority.  This will show results from blogs with at least one link.

3. Some authority.  This will show results from blogs with a handful of links.
4. A lot of authority. This will show results from blogs with hundreds of links.

The amount of links to a specific blog determines the authority of the blog in Technorati. This is not groundbreaking news since Technorati has been using link counts to determine blog authority and displaying it in other ways on the site. However, the new sliding filter (shown below) will help sift through the result sets to find more relevant and authoritative blog posts to read and potentially link to.

For a couple of other perspectives on the new authority feature check out Scobleizer and TechCrunch.   

Tracking Google Map Mashups

I came across Google Maps Mania, a blog which tracks Google Map mashup applications, while producing my own Ning powered Google mashup application called TeamSportsBars.com.

Google Maps Mania is a blog that highlights new Google Map mashups and posts a little brief about each one. It is definitely worth taking a look at some of the latest creations. Much to my delight I even noticed that TeamSportsBars.com was recently mentioned.

I  just wonder how these mashup creators feel about the recent report that Google Maps is going to soon start carrying advertisements.

Listible: A List Makers' Dream

Listible is a web 2.0 beta that empowers individuals to create lists for just about anything. The created list items can then be rated on by the community by a voting mechanism. Listible leverages both tagging and voting to enable a more relevant search and sorting features for a better user experience.

Listible currently lists the following as the top five most popular lists (by number of list items):

• Web 2.0 Products and Services
• Best Firefox Extensions
• Social Bookmarking Sites
• Full List of CSS Galleries
• Best Online Calendars

Rate any of the current list items or create your very own list. I think Listible could be a great way to display an endless pool of subjects from "favorite blogs or websites" to "places to go" to "things to do." Thanks to Steve Rubel for pointing Listible out to me.

Edgeio Screen-shots Found On Flickr

While writing my last post pointing out the new edgeio blog, I noticed these three edgeio screen-shots [edgeio, edgeiocars and edgeiofilterbytags] coming up in Technorati search results (as shown below) under the Flickr photos area.

Michael Arrington also mentions edgeio today on TechCrunch. I wonder if these screen-shots are supposed be out on the web quite yet?

Edgeio: Launches A Blog

Edgeio, the new service crawling the edge of the web for listings, launched a blog recently. The first post on the blog titled The Beginning give a wonderful explanation and background on edgeio. It starts by saying:

"Edgeio is all about edge publishing. It is our belief that services that try to restrict how users create and consume information cannot ultimately be successful. Users own their data, and services exist not to silo that data, but rather to add value to it. That is what Edgeio is setting out to do."

I would highly recommend reading the rest of the first post to better understand edgeio. It is an extremely compelling web 2.0 service that could change the way we sell products online.

The second post on the edgeio blog points to a number of different perspectives on technology bloggers including Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Stowe Boyd and a number of others. I was pleasantly surprised to see my name, Frank Gruber, mentioned with such an all-star cast - thank you to edgeio for the mention.

Short On Words: Visual Thesaurus to the Rescue

Are you ever short of words while writing a blog post? Do you like to find new words to add flair to your posts? If the answer is yes to either of those questions then you are going to love Visual Thesaurus. Visual Thesaurus is product by Thinkmap that maps words visually showing their connection with other like words. The way they plot the words reminds me of atomic diagramming. According to the Thinkmap website:

"Visual Thesaurus is a tool for people that think visually."

This is a pretty amazing little application and runs in both a subscription and desktop download software licensing model. My girlfriend actually pointed it out to me so I must tip the hat to her. She's a writer and thinks this application is an excellent tool for brainstorming or finding "that perfect word" for expressing things in a dynamic and memorable way. I agree with her and also feel it is an fabulous blend technology and syntax.