SOMEWHAT FRANK

Google Trends Compares Search Data

Google launched Google Trends today (May 10, 2006) as part of Google Press Day. Google Trends allows you to search and compare search data on terms that are entered into a single search field. The layout reminds me of Google Finance but instead of plotting stock information it plots search data with important news tied to the peaks and valleys of the chart. Additionally, the search data can be filtered by date and region.

I think this is a very useful tool especially for the search crazed, search engine marketing professionals and the public relations community. For additional perspectives on Google Trends check out the reviews on TechCrunch and Micro Persuasion.

BitTorrent Goes Hollywood With WB

BitTorrent, a software which speeds the processing time to download movies and other online rich media, reportedly inked a deal with Warner Brothers, a division of the Time Warner company, to sell movies and TV shows online. Much has been said about this deal today by mainstream media and the blogosphere so I am going to keep this post fairly concise.

I think this is a great move by Warner Brothers to embrace the online matriculation of television and movie content by offering its own legal downloads. I am happy to see that the industry has taken an, if you can't beat them, join them, attitude as the deal helps to head off the sharing of illegal versions of these same materials but also offers an additional revenue stream to help offset loses in other film distribution methods.

Real-Time Resources Aggregated

ResourceShelf Real-Time is a new ResourceShelf feature which provide links to web, software, mobile and other application that "offer real-time or near real-time" data and information. ResourceShelf, a site powered by librarians including search engine legend Gary Price, has been aggregating at least one piece of information a day for over five years. This is a pretty amazing show of persistence. ResourceShelf is powered by DocuTicker another site which provides:

"...a daily update of news reports from government agencies, ngo's, think tanks, and other groups."

This is again the work of librarians and was highlighted by Pluck awhile back as the feed of the day. The new ResourceShelf Real-Time feature could help provide solutions and services to help quench the thirst of the real-time information hungry.

Procrastinate? To Do Lists TechCrunched

Do you procrastinate your to do's? Though despair.com pokes fun at procrastination with images like the one above the age old solution has been jotting down a simple to do list with a pen and paper. With the web 2.0 movement simple to do lists have moved to the web. I recently reviewed five of the most popular online to do list products on TechCrunch in a post titled, Do More: Online To Lists Compared. Be sure to digg it if you like it. 

Quintura for a Visual Search Experience

Quintura, a Moscow-based company with an office in Alexandria, Virginia, markets a line of search products for the visually inclined. Quintura Search is slick desktop client for searching the web. It renders search results from just about every major search engine and even some of the blog search engines.

Quintura has a unique two pane layout which provides a cloud or web of related search terms in the left pane and the actual search results in the right pane. Upon hovering over a search term in the left pane the search results dynamically change to match the new search term in the right pane as shown in the screen-shot above. Quintura layout draws parallels to Visual Thesaurus which is a thesaurus product review previously on Somewhat Frank. Some other interesting features wrapped into Quintura include the ability to save searches which could come in handy for common searches as well as the ability to remove individual search results items, bulk search result items from the same domain and add a search result to favorites. All of these features could come in handy at one time or another. I could see Quintura being very helpful to anyone doing search engine marketing or search engine optimization.

Yakov Sadchikov, Quintura Co-founder, Quintura communicated that they had just launched an online version of the service in Russia. If you speak Russian you can check out the now live online Russian version of Quintura here. Yakov also said that they are in the process of  beta testing the English online version of the product as well. If it is anything like the desktop version it is going provide an excellent search experience for a visually inclined searcher.

Quintura Search is pretty slick - check out the live Quintura demo or download the desktop client. For future updates check out the Quintura blog.

Web 2.0 Human List Aggregator

Richard MacManus, who writes for ZDNet in addition to a magnificent blog called Read/Write Web, has taken on the role of human aggregator for his latest post which pulls together a number of lists that are currently tracking web 2.0.  A number of the sources have been highlighted previously on Somewhat Frank so it is nice to see them in one place as a "handy dandy" resource list.

List The Things You Want With Wishlistr

Wishlistr recently launched to provide the ability to create and share online wish lists.

Wishlistr allows you to create as many wish lists as your little heart desires. The lists allow you to include a title and links to items that you are interested in. So you can aggregate links from a number of different online stores. However, if an item does not have a link you can still list it. Wishlistr also provides a number of template options to change the look and feel of your list. Lists can remain private but if you want to get word out they can be shared with friends and family by making a list public, emailing it or sharing it via an RSS feed.

A few other notable features include a bookmarklet which sits on your browser toolbar to allow a means to easily update a wish list as well as a bulk import of Amazon wish lists.

I threw together a quick wish list (just in time for my birthday next week) to demonstrate the functionality - it is public here. For additional Wishlistr information and updates check out the Wishlistr blog.

Waxxi Offers Interactive Podcast Event

Waxxi, a web 2.0 startup focusing on offering interactive podcasts and creating a global online community, has scheduled a kickoff event aimed at bringing large scale interactivity to podcasts. The event will feature Robert Scoble and Shel Israel authors of Naked Conversations and will take place on May 20, 2006.

Naked Conversations is a wonderful book aimed at explaining what every business should understand about business blogging. I have highlighted some blogging success tips previously on Somewhat Frank. The book was nearly called blog or die (a little harsh, I know) because companies that ignore the powerful blogging movement could essentially die.

The event is going to offer global interactivity by allowing anyone to call in and engage in the live naked conversation with Robert and Shel which will then be offered as a podcast. To sign up for the event visit Waxxi.us.

Download the Waxxi kickoff event PDF here.

For additonal information be sure to check out the Waxxi blog. Also check out Waxxi founder Tracy Sheridan's recent blog post on taking podcasts interactive.

Disclaimer: I am currently a strategic advisor/consultant to Waxxi.

Topix Offers Publisher Rev Share Option

Topix.net has launched an interesting service called the Publisher Platform which will display full text articles on the Topix.net website. Topix.net would in turn share the profits on any advertising revenue it generates from users viewing the full text of your articles on Topix.net.

The program is opened for both large, small publishers and blogs and is completely separate and apart from its crawl search index. If I am not mistaken this move could make Topix.net the only full content aggregator. The Publisher Platform draws some parallels to BlogBurst by Pluck since both are locking up publishers but have different goals.  Topix.net appears to be continuing to improve its aggregation destination site by offering full text content under the Topix.net domain while BlogBurst is taking blog content and distributing it on other larger mainstream media publishers. I have dropped Topix.net an email to find out more details.

TypePad Falls Victim To Hacker Attack

TypePad, the hosted weblog platform by Six Apart, was attacked last night by a sophisticated denial of service attack that brought Somewhat Frank and number of other sites down. It appears that everything is back up and running smoothly this morning. I apologize to anyone that tried to get to Somewhat Frank during the down time and appreciate your patience.

UPDATE: Anil Dash of Six Apart has posted about the DOS attack on TypePad with a message to the hackers.

FeedBurner Drops The Blues

FeedBurner, the Chicago-based feed management company, coming off a recent mention in Crain's has launched a fresh and clean look to its website. Gone are the days of the dark shades of blue as they have been replaced with white space and gradiant color (very web 2.0-ish). I like the new look!  

Check it out for yourself above or go to FeedBurner.com and see the new design for yourself.

Sphere Blog Search: Needs To Train Dogs

Sphere, a blog search engine, finally launched today (May 2, 2006) after much anticipation with a new look and logo since first hearing about Sphere in October 2005. My first impressions was that it presents a very simple interface with a clean layout. The site was designed with the help of Adaptive Path and Ryan Freitas had this to say on designing the search site:

"The question for the Adaptive Path team was how to iterate the search experience without alienating users. More importantly, we wanted to do so without messing up the elegance of the search box."

The search features were a little different than what I am used to but they were manageable once I took a quick look at the search tips. One interesting thing I noted was that Sphere keeps tabs on a few blog metrics like average posts per week, average words per post and number of posts this week under a blog profile page. Also Sphere provides a media search which pulls together a news, photo and book search all in one page. The photos appear to be pulled in from Webshots.

There were a number perspectives given in the following Sphere reviews:

• TechCrunch
• The Search Engine Marketing Blog
• Search Engine Watch
• Venture Voice
• Elliott Back

Overall, I liked Sphere and think it has a chance to compete with Technorati, Google Blog Search and IceRocket.com for the blog search engine crown but its biggest obstacle is going to be to teaching old Technorati trained dogs new tricks. Sphere has a solid braintrust with past successes which include WordPress and OddPost so I think they might just be able to make this blog search engine race interesting.

Blogosphere Speaks Many Languages

David Sifry, CEO and founder of blog search engine Technorati, has released a second part to his recent yet reoccurring State of the Blogosphere report focusing on the various languages of the blogosphere. Apparently, English is no longer the primarily language of the blogosphere as David Sifry states:

"Something that may come as a surprise (at least to the English-speaking world) is that English isn't the biggest language of the blogosphere."

Here are the rest of the details of the report:

• The blogosphere is multilingual, and deeply international.
• English, while being the language of the majority of early bloggers, has fallen to less than a third of all blog posts in April 2006.
• Japanese and Chinese language blogging has grown significantly.
• Chinese language blogging, while continuing to grow on an absolute basis, has begun to decline as an overall percentage of the posts that Technorati tracks over the last 6 months
• Japanese, Chinese, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and German are the languages with the greatest number of posts tracked by Technorati.
• The Korean language is underrepresented in this analysis.
• Language breakdown does not necessarily imply a particular country or regional breakdown.
• Technorati now tracks more than 100 Million author-created tags and categories on blog posts.

So does this mean English speaking bloggers need to start taking Japanese lessons? 

If you are interested be sure to check out the Japanese Language School Database for a location near you.

BlogBurst Public Launch

BlogBurst, a product by Pluck  that repositions bloggers content for use by mainstream media companies, according to TechCrunch is said to be officially launching tomorrow (May 2, 2006). I first was demoed BlogBurst back in December 2005 and mentioned it publicly in February of this year. Since then the Pluck team has been busy locking up mainstream media companies like SFGate.com and WashingontonPost.com as well as signing up over 1,000 bloggers. Not to mention, they have been putting the finishing touches on the BlogBurst Workbench management tools.

The large amount of blogger buy-in does not surprise me but I am surprised that more media companies have not yet jumped on board and become Lighthouse Customers - since it seems like a no brainer win-win situation for bloggers and publishers alike.

I am happily looking forward to Somewhat Frank being part of the BlogBurst program. Congrats to Pluck on the public launch. For additional information check out the BlogBurst blog.

Yahoo Tech: Consumer Tech Site Launched

Yahoo has launched a new site, Yahoo Tech, with fresh content that focuses on tackling consumer electronic technology products. The content strategy for the site appears to be a mashup which includes content from four bloggers, reviews from various sources like PC World and PC Magazine, iFilm "how to" videos and advertisements (that are integrated to look like content). The four bloggers are referred to as advisors and defined as the Mom, the Boomer, the Working Guy and the Techie Diva to target and relate to these same four demographics.

Yahoo Tech ties in with a Yahoo account and allows you to easily search, save, compare and review consumer technology products of your choice. I think it would be nice if you could easily add a product to a Yahoo Shoposphere list.

One other notable feature of Yahoo Tech is the "Hook Me Up" section which teams with iFilm to produce videos that hook consumers up with sweet consumer electronic products as they produce a "how to" video to help explore setting up new products. There are open auditions to be "hooked up" here.

Yahoo Tech is taking a shot at CNet Reviews, Engadget and Gizmodo but has a long way to go to match the quality and quantity of content of any of these three sites. It will be amusing to watch the site grow and mature.

For additional blogosphere perspectives on the launch of Yahoo Tech check out TechCrunch, Read/WriteWeb and PaidContent.org.