SOMEWHAT FRANK

Tailrank 2.0 Aggregator Rolled Out

Tailrank, the blog post aggregator, has launched a slick new interface redesign and a few additional features. According to the Tailrank blog:

"The majority of the work on this release has been on our ranking algorithms. Tailrank now breaks stories faster, cluster them better, and generally does a better job at finding the hottest news in the blogosphere."

The new Tailrank also enables a user to track each story via RSS or by AOL Instant Messenger. This could be a helpful feature with stories that get a lot of coverage and are worth tracking via IM alerts. Tailrank also introduced archives for the most popular stories of the week which could come in very handy if you miss a day or two of news. In addition to the algorithmic changes and story tracking features Tailrank is looking to expand to add new categories, like entertainment, with more to come soon. Finally, Tailrank hints at a number of new features within the next couple of weeks. It will be interesting to see what Tailrank 2.1 will bring.

Bottom-line: The new Tailrank looks much improved and will probably give Gabe Rivera's Techmeme some solid competition.

Related Link: Aggregators: Multiplying Like Rabbits

Searching For A Pony Online

Since I flew out to Chicago to co-host TECH cocktail 2 on Thursday night, I made a weekend out of it and visited family and friends in the area. On Saturday, I made a trip out to the country and visited some of my relative’s latest arrivals, which happen to be two pregnant quarter horses named Lucy and Belle (shown to the right). I inquisitively wondered where you might purchase horses of this kind. Is there an online classified advertising site devoted to horses for sale? In doing some quick searching online I learned of the following options:

• Equine.com is probably the most well established and best option as it appears to offer the most search results. Its advanced search features allow users to really narrow down search results based on very specific criteria.
• Horseville.com uses a craigslist-like plain and simple design to offer a super advanced search functionality which rivals that of Equine.com. Results include photos and sometimes videos, as well an inline family background or bloodline charts since most horse buyers are looking for a certain pedigree.
• 2BuyHorses.com offers very light classified listings however some of the listings have multiple photos.
• Horsecity.com, is a site that is not solely devoted but is a few steps away from being a “social network” for horse related products. They offer a primitive blog which is powered by the open-source project called drupal. Its classified ads offer some interesting advertising features which include the addition of a video clip to an ad which might be useful if you want to see a horse in action. In addition, Horsecity.com offers a pedigree search which could come in handy when searching for a specific breeding bloodline.
• Quarter Horse Directory  or QHD.com offers classified advertising spots that are extremely primitive and resemble table cells with all capitalized ad text without any photos – pretty ugly user experience compared to these other options but I presume it still gets the job done.
• Horsetopia.com offers a number resources and classified listings with up to six photos. In addition horse ranches or breeders can create a profile page which displays all of their current listings.
  

I also turned to craigslist.com to see if I could find any classified advertisements and found none in the Chicago area. Next, I visited Edgeio, the classified listing site which looks along the edge of the web for listings. Edgeio had one page of Illinois listings when I searched for the term “quarter  horse” and most of them came from a site called EverythingEquus.com a site that I did not find via other conventional search methods. I am no equestrian so I wonder if there are other solid options I failed to mention?

Of the current offerings I would have to say Equine.com offers the largest selection and most advanced interface design which sets it apart from the other current horse classified site options. The horse classified business online is extremely segmented which leaves a huge opportunity to create a horse classified listing aggregator site to allow a user to find all of the various sites and listings in one set of search results. Similar to how Zillow.com came out of nowhere to plant itself in the think of a competitive real estate sites, the online horse classified business landscape could change very quickly with the introduction of a solid web 2.0 offering. Classified advertising sites online do not need to be flashy to be successful. However, I must mention I did find that most of the web sites esthetically resemble “old school” web or web 1.0. In addition, none of the above offered RSS or syndication feeds.

Bottom-line: There are number of niche sites devoted to online horse classified advertisements but there is a lot of room for improvement and opportunity for innovation in the space.

Second TECH cocktail Smoothly Downed

Last night (October 12, 2006), Eric Olson and I hosted our second TECH cocktail in Chicago at the Gramercy. As we first envisioned nearly 8 months ago, TECH cocktail 2 brought together the technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, bloggers, podcasters and corporate masterminds in the area. With the list of rsvp'ed guests at 400+ for the evening by the events start time, I was a little leary as to if we could keep every guest smiling. I feel like that if the 350+ guests that did attend even had a quarter the fun I had I would consider it a great success. Judging by the feedback I have gotten, I think we can rest assured we pulled it off smoothly.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You...
I am extremely thankful to a number of people and companies that made TECH cocktail even happen. First of all, a quick thank you to Eric Olson for being great partner in TECH cocktail crime and more importantly a great friend. Secondly, thank to all of our sponsors which included  midPhase, mk Capital, Coastr, Liquid Talk, Chicago.com, Digital Bootcamp and Chicago Enterpreneurial Center.  Thanks to all the companies that were willing to go under the hood and showcase their products. This includes eSigma, GrubHub, Pawky.com, Planypus and Time59 - thank you. Thanks to our three film crews which include Liquid Talk, Stone Cliff Productions and TechnologyEvangelist.com. Thanks to Jonathan Wolter for working registration and spreading some TechSocial love. Thanks to guys from Freshwater Venture who brought some pretty sweet company baseball cards. Of course, thank you to my family and friends for coming out and supporting the movement. Don Loeb was even in from San Francisco to attend - thanks for coming Don! Finally, special thanks to Jeff Pulver for coming over from New York to attend and pick up a tab on several hundred rounds of drinks.

Event Photos & Reactions...
Here are the photos tagged techcocktail2. 
Here is some of the buzz from the blogosphere:

• TECH cocktail 2: Wrap & Thank you - TECH cocktail (Official Tc2 thank you)
• About Last Night… (David gives his perspective)
• TechCocktail - a great party - tins ::: Rick Klau’s weblog (Glad Rick made it to this one!)
• I even wore a tie! (Dan from midPhase wore a tie)
• Tech Cocktail 2: What a Party: Technology Evangelist (Thanks for coming down!)
• About Last Night: TECH Cocktail 2 in Chicago - The Jeff Pulver Blog (Black AMEX, enough said - thank you!)
• TECH cocktail 2: Good Times, Lessons Learned - Chicagoist (Thanks for covering the limo situation so well)
• Chicago Beta (This is exactly what we wanted to see happen - more events!)
• TechCocktail tonight in Chicago « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger (Thanks for the plug Robert, wish you could have made it)

TECH cocktail Specials...

We also took the opportunity to introduce a new TECH cocktail product called TECH cocktail Specials (techcocktail.com/jobs) a job listing board that we hopes helps to connect employers with jobseekers surrounding TECH cocktail events. Not to mention, proceeds will help to support future TECH cocktail events. If you are interested in giving it a free trial please feel free to email and I will hook you up. The site was developed by Phraction.

With two TECH cocktails downed smoothly - we will see you at TECH cocktail 3!

Tagged: techcocktail2

Widgets, Widgets Everywhere!

I recently highlighted the activity of widgets in the web 2.0 space. With the number of players jumping into the widgets space, I concluded the article by saying:

"An open standard development infrastructure which would allow a single widget to be plugged into any application and work properly seems to be something the widget movement is currently lacking – it may be a pipe-dream but I think it is worth wishing for."

It appears that I am not the only one with this dream. Ironically, I ran into Om Malik recently and he mentioned a conference that he was organizing focusing on widgets. Today, Niall Kennedy has presented the details of the first ever Widgets Live! conference which he is organizing in conjunction with Om. It is scheduled as a one-day conference Monday, November 6, 2006 in San Francisco. With all the movement and buzz surrounding widgets this conference is extremely timely and would probably worth your time.

Google Pays $1.65B For YouTube Audience

Google, finally confirmed the purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock options after TechCrunch first surfaced the rumor as, "40% likely to be at least partially true." It was a covered by just about everyone and their brother so I am going to keep this article fairly brief.  Some might think YouTube is a ridiculous gamble on video working out online. Others might criticize YouTube for its wealth of copyrighted and pirated content. However, it is very likely Google will address both of these concerns.

As the number of people that realize that they are paying for cable television and only watching one or two channels the trend to cancel their cable should increase.  Since YouTube is currently a popular place for the masses to watch "on demand" and video content online so they are positioned well to absorb these cable cancelers. A number of television networks like CBS are dabbling online by locking up channels online. This will most likely continue and further push the online video movement to a tipping point. To help clean-up the wealth of copyrighted and pirated content Google recently signed content deals to position itself to surface licensed content. However, Google is going to have to be cautious as to how they clean up YouTube, which compares to Napster which was a pirated mess of content before it was shut down and eventually cleaned up.

Bottom-line: The important thing to remember is that YouTube currently has brand recognition and the attention of with mainstream audiences. This has value, $1.65 billion of value in this case - paid for the attention of the YouTube audience.

The Washington Stock Exchange: Stock Market For Political Futures

In more than enough time to catch the horse race, The Washington Stock Exchange (WSX for short) has appeared online. Although still in beta, the site offers users the ability to bet on future political events; things like whether the Republicans will retain control of the Senate come November, if Senator Barack Obama will announce a Presidential Run for '08, or if Bin Laden will be captured in 2007.

The Washington Stock Exchange mirrors the New York Stock Exchange as events are set to stocks and the stock price represents the likelihood that the specific event will occur. The site does not provide much information on the actual company that developed it but it does boast a very scholarly Advisory Board. Joining is free and membership includes $1 million dollars to play around with, so it's all fun and games at this point.

On Election Day we will see how accurate of a predictor the WSX really is. Yet, there are some issues that still need to be worked out. For example, in the highly publicized Connecticut Senate race between Senator Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont, Lieberman's stock is valued at $83.89 while Lamont's is $26.89. Perhaps it's counter-intuitive, but if Lieberman has an 83% chance of victory, shouldn't Lamont have only a 17% chance? Perhaps statisticians can prove otherwise. Regardless, the site is an addictive place to go for those interested in politics or campaigning. The site also features data on each stock, including past performance and total shares. Graphs showing the fluctuating price of stocks like the one representing the GOP's control of the House of Representatives are especially interesting to examine given the present political climate. The GOP retaining US Senate control is also a stock option (as shown below).

All in all, The Washington Stock Exchange offers an intriguing opportunity for political-junkies to chart public perceptions. It draws comparisons to ProTrade, the professional sports stock exchange. If the site catches on, it may become a useful tool for the politicians as well.

*Special thanks to LBJ for assisting with this article on Somewhat Frank.

IceRocket Resurfaces with Blogger Stats

IceRocket, a blog search engine that gets mentioned less and less in the blog search discussions, has begun to offer a new blog metrics feature which might attract bloggers back. Similar to BlogBeat, which was acquired by FeedBurner, IceRocket is offering blog metrics.

Offering bloggers metrics might help IceRocket to reverse the downward decline in traffic over the past year (shown below). I recall almost two years ago IceRocket was a rising star along side Technorati in a very open blog search race. Technorati has continued to grow and companies like Sphere have been created and stolen some of the spotlight. I remember getting lots of referals from people finding my content via IceRocket blog search and have mentioned IceRocket a number of times on Somewhat Frank. What happened to IceRocket?

It will be interesting to see if IceRocket can use the metrics feature to delieve blogosphere reporting on the state of the IceRocket tracked blogosphere. Or is too late to stop IceRocket's downward traffic spiral?

"Heresy!" Innovation Discussion Covers Processes & Customer Inspired Products

Innovation has become an extremely hot word in the last few years as companies work to push the envelope on the products and services. On Wednesday (October 4, 2006), I had the opportunity to listen to a brown bag discussion presented at the AOL Mountain View Headquarters. The event titled “Heresy!” featured Ant Creed, formerly of IDEO and currently a user research manager at Intuit, and Chris Quinn, sr. product manager at Intuit. The event was organized by Mike Macadaan, director of creative design and innovative leader at AOL.

Ant and Chris spoke about innovating to produce products that people can use and like but challenged some common assumptions or as they call them "hereies." They stressed the importance of the people you select when creating a team explaining that the people on the team will make you successful. Also they explained the keys to product development success as follows:

• solve a problem
• solve a problem well

Finally they urged synthesis (taking a more active role) rather than spending a lot of time analyzing data. Interestingly, the strategy and principles presented reminded of the simple, less for success, “Get Real” the rally cry of software development shop, 37signals. If you are interested in listening to the discussion in it entirety, search for “AOL Mountain View” in iTunes and subscribe to the AOL Mountain View, Behind the Scenes podcast.

Widgets and Web 2.0

Widgets have become a hot topic in the web community lately as a large number of sites are allowing users to personalize their experience. The term widget can be used interchangeably with gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake but for the sake of simplicity I will use the term widget in this article to cover all of these terms.

What is a widget?
As the web has become widget happy with community development projects popping up everywhere, I think it is safe to assume that the general public does not even know what a widget is. Rachel Cunliffe, cre8d web designer, recently asked this very question as she encountered an advertisement which pointed her to a widget.  A widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate html-based web page. A widget can be created for just about every site or service possible thus allowing users to pull it into personalized homepages (Netvibes, Spotback and Pageflakes), blogs (WordPress and Typepad) or other social website pages (AIM Pages, TagWorld and MySpace). 

Why all the buzz about widgets?
Widgets are a great way for a site or service to creatively offer products, services or news without having to visit the actual site. Similar to feeds and syndication, widgets can save a user time by making everything they care about on the web easily accessible in one place. Widgets can also leverage syndication in unique ways. The idea really rings clear on a personalized homepage which allow users to aggregate and create their own configuration of widgets. In a recent TechCrunch article Mike Arrington explained the value in a widget-driven personal homepage, Netvibes, as it positions all your favorites in front of you in at one time in saying:

“Like Google search, the best thing about Netvibes is that it has no problem with me quickly leaving the site to take care of other business. And that’s why it’s earned my loyalty as a user.”

Ease of use and the ability to see all or items in one page (via widgets) makes them a key component in the personalization process.

It is unclear exactly who was the first to create a widget. History seems to believe the word "widget" is derived from the combination of "window" and "gadget." A number of widget projects have risen up to help further along the widget movement. Konfabulator was swept up by Yahoo and leveraged to launch Yahoo Widgets to place widgets in front of a mainstream audience. Dashboard, an Apple project, was created to place widgets on the Mac OS X desktop. Opera web browser offers desktop widgets. Google Gadgets launched yesterday (October 3, 2006) to unleash 1200 new widgets which can be used on any web page. Microsoft also offers Gadgets for Windows Live. IAmAlpha.com is an AOL widget initative for AIM Pages which launched with a makeover in May 2006. 

A number of widget marketplaces that have also popped up. Widgetbox, a the online widget marketplace, looks to widgetize the web by offering a number of different widget options. Widgipedia, a free widget community deems itself the ultimate cross-platform resource for both users and developers of widgets and gadgets. The Spring Box, offers a platform to create widgets on for both the desktop and the web and Clearspring, currently in private beta, also appears to be a widget platform looking to widgetize the web.

Bottom-line: Widgets are the wave of the future of the web as our attention continues to be overloaded with too much information. With widgets, users are able to customize a page to be able to get their sites and services in personalized homepages.  An open standard development infrastructure which would allow a single widget to be plugged into any application and work properly seems to be something the widget movement is currently lacking – it may be a pipe-dream but I think it is worth wishing for.

PayPerPost: Splog or Blog Post Creator?

PayPerPost, who recently announced $3 million of first round funding, is a web site that offers bloggers money for writing blog posts about a specific product. PayPerPost allows a blog post board which enables marketers and advertisers to request a blog post for a set price about a specific product or service. TechCrunch posted interesting write-ups (here and here) and a recent TalkCrunch podcast episode discussing the funding announcement, the unique business model and the ethical questions swarming around the product. PayPerPost is really walking the ethical line between good and evil. I think it was created to help connect marketers and advertisers with grassroots product reviews.

Splog Post Generator?
Is PayPerPost producing spam blog posts to optimize search engine ranking? Is it a human splog generator? That is a great question, and after much thought I have come to the conclusion, that it really depends on the blog, writer and the actual write-up. For example, if someone is getting paid to write a post and therefore is not objective in a review then of course PayPerPost is NOT a good thing at all. There are a number of blogs that produce high quality and very objective content, so could this destroy the purity of the blogosphere for everyone?

Blog Post Generator?
The flip-side of the debate, while bloggers get paid for their work the product offers leads to bloggers who may have run out of things to write about. Therefore, bloggers may find the leads from PayPerPost helpful in generating blog post ideas or leads. As long as bloggers remain objective and non-evil the service could be a win-win for marketers, advertisers and bloggers alike – and everyone lives happily ever after without fear of boogiemen, terrorist or natural disasters.

Maintaining Perspective / Keeping It Real
It is likely that just about every blogger that maintains a consistent flow of content has received emails from marketers and advertisers introducing them to products and services to preview as explained in my previous write-up exposing the blogosphere underground. When I do receive these emails previewing new products and services, I take a very close look at the product or service and I leave it up to my own discretion if the product or service is worthy of a write-up. Though it may sound similar to the PayPerPost.com model the major difference is that in receiving emails from marketers and advertisers I am NOT getting paid and therefore I can remain totally objective and only write about things I want to write about. Another example can be drawn from my recent move to join AOL. Since joining AOL I have written a few reviews about new AOL products and have been sure to keep my perspective legit. It I don't like them I would point out the things I don't like in my review. Maintaining my objective and frank perspective in my reviews is of utmost importance since it keeps Somewhat Frank, fresh and real – it also keeps my conscience clear.

Bottom-line: It is difficult to say at this point the impact PayPerPost will have on the blogosphere - it is a heated debated. It is obvious that PayPerPost has created a new business model which draws comparisons to Overture’s creation of the pay per click advertising model which was also debated but later perfected by Google with AdSense.

Own Your Attention Data with APML

Touchstone, an Attention product created by faradaymedia, announced today (October 1, 2006) an innovative Attention initiative called “Attention Profiling Mark-up Language” or APML with the intent of letting people own their own attention data. 

According to APML.org:

“APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.”

What is attention data? Attention data consists of a combination of all the clicks a person makes online. It could include browser history, purchase history and any site specific preferences.

Possible uses for APML include:

• Keep control of your own Attention Profile - it's very valuable (read attentiontrust.org)   
• Ask Amazon to export an APML file of your Attention Profile (the same one they use to recommend books to you) so you can move to another bookstore (just like OPML lets you easily switch feed readers)      
• Upload your APML file to Digg to get a customized view of Digg stories that match your interests 
• Use your APML to filter incoming alerts (using something like Touchstone)      
• Submit your APML to an Attention Brokerage service to allow synchronized access to your Attention Profile across all APML compatible services. In this way all your sites and services can keep track of your changing interests

There are a couple of other Attention based initiatives which include Attention Trust and GestureBank. It appears that Touchstone is not trying to compete with these other services but instead plans to unify the services based on the participation of the individual user. APML combines all of a users information into one file that can be easily transported. Touchstone is also creating a product (screen-shot below) to monitor, analyze and recommends alerts based on the information it collections. The product sounds similar a product I highlighted previously, that Root offers. For more information on the Touchstone approach check out the Touchstone manifesto.

Bottomline: APML appears to be a step in the right direction however, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the industry accepts this new Attention approach.

The White House Has RSS Feeds & Podcasts

With my recent move to the Washington, DC area I have been exploring what the new city has to offer and I noticed that the White House has RSS syndication feeds and podcasts. Yes, it's true.

It is great to see the government supporting the web 2.0 movement leveraging syndication feeds to get the White House updates out.  I'd love to see how many subscribers each feed has. I wonder if they are even capturing those metrics?

Of course, my favorite offering is a video podcast starring first pup, Scottish Terrier Barney.