SOMEWHAT FRANK

A Look Back At 2006

It has been a great 2006, as Somewhat Frank has offered up over 400 articles which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors. I thought it might be interesting to reflect on some of the best of 2006 as we look forward to 2007. Here are some of the most popular articles:

1. Facebook Redesign Angers Students Over Invaded Privacy (September  6, 2006)
2. VideoJug: The Online 'How To' Video Site (December 28, 2006)
3. Why Isn’t Internet Access Free For Travelers? (November 27, 2006)
4. The History of the Personal Homepage (September  3, 2006)
5. Widgets Live! Everywhere (November 11, 2006)
6. Philanthropy Through Technology (October 18, 2006)
7. Kiboze: Group Text Messaging Made Easy (August 12, 2006)
8. RunFatBoy.net and Get In Shape (September 26, 2006)
9. 37signals Preaches "Less" For Success (April 29, 2006)
10. PlentyofFish.com the Craigslist of Dating (March 25, 2006)

Most of the traffic to Somewhat Frank came from:

1. Google 
2. Digg
3. Direct or RSS feed
4. Yahoo
5. Technorati
6. MSN
7. Techmeme

The top web 2.0 keywords which brought visitors to Somewhat Frank were:

1. web 2.0 directory
2. web 2.0 compliant
3. web 2.0 widgets
4. wine web 2.0
5. how to start a web 2.0 company
6. web 2.0 aggregator
7. web 2.0 sites
8. web 2.0 techniques
9. web 2.0
10. learning web 2.0

Some of the top overall keywords that brought visitors to Somewhat Frank were:

1. frank gruber (no big surprise here)
2. plentyoffish.com
3. green monster games
4. moobella
5. goodsearch
6. like.com
7. somewhat frank (another shocker)
8. devilfinder
9. myheritage
10. chalksite

Finally, let's take a snapshot look at where Somewhat Frank readers came from (click the map to see a larger view):

Alas, Somewhat Frank is a global destination. Thank you all for reading and interacting with Somewhat Frank in 2006 and be sure to tune in for more in 2007.

Happy New Year from Somewhat Frank!

A Web Of Superheroes

So you probably have seen by now the slew of articles that start out "What superhero are you?", "What superhero am I?" or "I am <fill in the blank with a superhero name>." To further amplify the signal of this blogospheric chain-letter, I will participate in one final meme of 2006. A few weeks ago I was tagged for the "5 things meme" and participated by posting 5 things about me - this time it is the "superhero meme." Upon answering a number of random questions on a rather amateur looking, Google Adsense-heavy web site, I received the following results: 

You are The Flash

The Flash 80% Superman 75% Iron Man 70% Robin 57% Spider-Man 50% Hulk 50% Green Lantern 45% Batman 45% Supergirl 42% Wonder Woman 37% Catwoman 30%

Fast, athletic and flirtatious.

I guess all those years of childhood wearing superhero underoos have somehow paid off! Which Superhero are you?

Photo attribution: POSITiv via Flickr
 

VideoJug: The Online 'How To' Video Site

There are a number of Q & A web sites, like Yahoo Answers, Yedda and Grupthink among others, that have recently emerged to embrace a large number of users looking to get their questions answered. VideoJug takes a slightly different approach to helping people to find answers online. VideoJug is a video web site with International, UK and US versions, focused on helping to explain life in 'how to' videos. VideoJug helps to answer questions like:

How to tie a full windsor knot?
How to perform the perfect golf swing?
How to conceal bags under your eyes?

VideoJug produces several of the videos itself but also offers users the ability to upload their own 'how to' videos. VideoJug 'how to' videos are accompanied by a transcribed version of the instructions which can be uploaded to an iPod 0r printed in text version. Videos are categorized into a number of different categories which all offer RSS feeds of the content. Registered users are offered the ability to save their favorite videos. VideoJug viral hooks include the ability to share videos via email and embed videos into other sites (as shown below in the How to Make a Mojito video).

Bottom-line: If you are trying to figure out 'how to' do something new you might want to search VideoJug for some visual directions.

Megite & TailRank Rank Top Web Videos

With loads of video to sort through on the web Megite and TailRank both launched new video features today (December 27, 2006) which present a quick view of the most popular videos of the day.

Megite, the news aggregator highlighted recently for its personal aggregator improvements, has added a feature to help point out popular videos with Megite Video. According to a post on the Megite blog Megite Video:

"...crawls hundreds of thousands of blogs for links to video on more than 20 video sharing services such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Daily Motion, Metacafe, Ifilm, Vimeo, Break, Revver, Grouper, Bolt, Yoqoo, 6Rooms, and more."

Megite Video ranks and displays videos based on popularity by taking the following factors into account:

1. The importance of a blog
2. The popularity of a blog
3. The number of blogs that are discussing a video

Megite founder, Matthew Chen, explained over email that he hopes to eventually be able to leverage user metrics such as click through data as a passive input into the Megite Video ranking system. Additionally, Megite is investigating active inputs in the form of voting for popular videos but is aware that spam prevention will have to be part of an effective implementation.

TailRank, a product highlighted previously on Somewhat Frank, rolled out video tracking components via the TailRank Video channel to present popular video contents of the web. Similar to Megite, TailRank 2.1 uses links as a key component to video popularity.

For other perspectives on the Megite and TailRank video products please check out these articles on: TechCrunch and SpashCast.

Bottom-line: Megite and TailRank both offer great products for a quick view of the most popular online videos based primarily on linking. I hope both these products continue to evolve and improve their respective video popularity algorithms.

SofaTube Brings Online Video To Your TV

With the rise of online video and the dropping cost of flat panel televisions it is only a matter of time until everyone is "watching the web" in their living rooms. Personally, I have found myself watching more and more videos on AOL video, Blip.tv, Revver and YouTube via my laptop hooked up to my LCD TV monitor. I think this trend will continue and SofaTube seems to be ahead of the curve.

SofaTube is a product produced by Red Kawa an Ottawa based company dedicated to helping bring rich Internet applications and games to the living room.  SofaTube offers a simple Ajax interface with large fonts and easy controls optimized for the "10 foot experience." SofaTube taps into YouTube and Revver for its video content but in testing SofaTube it appears it does not change the quality or resolution of the actual videos. So while you can navigate, search and play videos more easily using SofaTube the actual videos display as if you were viewing them on YouTube or Revver directly - I would like to see this improved.

Search Engine Journal gives more perspective on SofaTube. Also stay up to speed with the latest happenings on the SofaTube blog.

MyBlogLog Slips In Pictures Feature?

MyBlogLog, the product focused on creating a connected  blogosphere community, appears to have slipped a new pictures feature into the product. MyBlogLog users can now upload images to their account to be on displayed for the rest of the community to view. The picture functionality (shown below) is a very primitive single photo upload which hinders the number of images I would upload to the service. Additionally, all items posted are public as it does not appear to offer security levels.

I am a big fan of MyBlogLog as explained previously on Somewhat Frank. MyBlogLog was also recently acquired by Yahoo. It will be interesting to see how the picture feature evolves.  MyBlogLog asks you for various acquaintance levels (friend, family or admirer) when adding a contact to your profile similar to the way Flickr, another Yahoo property, handles photo privacy so it may make sense for them to lean on Flickr for advice. Or is an integration with Flickr already in the works?

Zamzar Free Online File Conversion Tool

Have you ever wanted to convert a pdf file into another format but had no means to do so? Or better yet, have you ever wanted to convert an aa3 file (i.e. iTunes song) to a Windows media format? I have to admit these are both annoying and irritating situations without the proper software install. Fret no longer as Zamzar is here to help.

Zamzar, a UK based startup, offers a simple, single page Ajax web application that lets you convert your video, audio, images, and documents from nearly any format to nearly any other format that you like. Zamzar's mission is to:

"To provide high quality file conversion for as many file formats as possible."

It seems that Zamzar is sticking to their mission. Check out this list of file conversion formats. Folksonomy interviewed Zamzar co-founder Chris Whyley recently if you would like to find out more about the creator behind this simple yet powerful product. Finally, stay tuned to the latest updates from Zamzar via the Zamzar blog.

Mix-Mas: A Virtual World For Sending Customized Holiday Greetings

With the holidays upon us hopefully you have sent your holiday wishes to all your family and friends. However, if you have not and you are still looking to send a holiday greeting you could send them a dancing elf greeting or you could give something a little more interactive a try. I recently was sent a greeting via Mix-Mas, a product created by Mantis, which brings holiday greeting customization and social interactivity to a new level. Mix-Mas is a flash-based web service that lets you send holiday greeting that all live together in a holiday greeting virtual world.

With Mix-Mas you can create a custom avatar to represent you in your greeting. The avatar will live in the Mix-Mas virtual holiday greeting world. While creating your avatar you can select from a number of options very similar to WeeWorld. A screen-shot of the creation screen can be seen above. After creating your avatar messenger you can send the greeting to anyone. I have created one here. Upon recieving the greeting you are directed to it in the Mix-Mas virtual world as shown below.

You will notice a number of other avatars which carry the messages as well. If you click on any avatar they will display their holiday message adding a web 2.0 social hook to the holiday greeting product. You can see my holiday greeting here or search Mix-mas by avatar name (i.e. Frank Gruber). If you still need more details check out this Mix-Mas video demo or by clicking the video below.

Bottom-line: Mix-Mas is a fun new way to send online holiday greetings. Create a custom avatar and send a holiday greeting today. Happy holidays!

CozmoTV Launches Personalized Video Site With Recommendations

CozmoTV, a subsidiary of Cozmo Media which has offices in San Francisco and Boston, recently launched an online video site that focuses on providing users with personalized video recommendations. Users can create custom channels for different types of content. Users can also rate individual videos to on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. These active inputs appear to be used to sculpt personalized video recommendations. According to the CozmoTV web site the idea spawned from the idea that:

“We both loved our TiVo®Boxes and thought that a great service would be to provide simplified search through a Website that would talk directly to your TiVo. (Sorry, TiVo, but we felt that your online scheduler kind of sucked.)”

I first learned of CozmoTV at the TechCrunch 8 Meetup in NYC when I talked with CozmoTV co-founder Alex Rowland. Since CozmoTV had not yet launched I was not able to see a product demo but he did compare CozmoTV to Pandora and TiVo.  I now see the validity in those comparisons though I also think CozmoTV's active inputs personalization model mirrors that of StumbleUpon Video which also recently launched. CozmoTV pulls its videos from YouTube but in doing comparison searches it appears to be only a subset of YouTube videos but as the number of online videos increases I could see this product becoming helpful in sorting through and finding new videos.

CozmoTV created incentives to go check it out and start rating video by offering up 80 Nintendo Wii gaming systems as prizes to the first 80 users who have a user confidence rating of 80 or more. I took some time to see how difficult that might be and I have to admit it is not a walk in the park. I watched and rated hours worth of video and was only able to get my rating up to 10.1%. At this rate, I may be better off looking for a Wii elsewhere but, that aside, I enjoyed creating my own channels and viewing the personalized recommendations.

For other perspectives on CozmoTV's recent launch check out: Rev2.org and Zatz Not Funny!. Also stay tuned to CozmoTV updates via the CozmoTV blog and good luck trying to win a Wii!

Somewhat Frank Nominated For Best Web 2.0 Blog Award With Elite Class

Somewhat Frank has been nominated by Search Engine Journal as the Best Web 2.0 Blog of the 2nd Annual Search Blog Awards. The awards highlight a number of great blogs focused on search but have been expanded to include awards for Best Social Media Blog, Best Web 2.0 Blog and Best Search Related Podcast.

I am elated to have Somewhat Frank nominated with such a solid group of Web 2.0 Blogs.  The competition includes, Mashable!, Read/Write Web, CenterNetworks and of course TechCrunch, a blog I have had the opportunity to contribute to throughout the year. These are some of my favorite blogs on the web. So to be frank, Somewhat Frank is the underdog in the competition, but you gotta love an underdog. :)

The best part is that the voting process is that you can rate more than one blog in each category so vote for all your favorite blogs today!

Megite Improves Personal Aggregator

Megite, an online news aggregator created by Matthew Chen, which I have highlight previously has improved its personalized news aggregator, My Megite by allowing users the ability to manage their own feed reading lists via an OPML file. Megite previously allowed users to create their own personalized news aggregator by sending in an OPML feed reading file in to Megite via email which was a very manual process. Though a great idea the previous process did not scale well as it created management bottleneck as users were not allowed to make their own OPML file updates. The new My Megite has eliminated this bottleneck. You can see mine here: Frank Gruber's Megite Personalized News Aggregator.

Dance Like An Elf: Spread Holiday Cheer

Officemax has produced a suite of holiday themed micro-site flash applications with viral marketing in mind.  One of the applications in particular enables you to fulfill your holiday dreams. That's right you can dance like an elf on the Internet with Elf Yourself!

A friend of mine pointed the site out to me yesterday and of course I needed to immediately elf myself. Unfortunately, I don't drop to the snow and show off my break-dance moves but I still bust a move with the best of them.

The Officemax tab in the lower right corner of the site offers a view of the additional micro-site applications which all seem to be focused at spreading the Officemax viral email messaging cheer. Some of them include:

Reindeer Arm Wrestling
Yes I'm Working
North Pole Dancing
Don't Shoot Your Eye Out!

Check them out or just elf yourself and drop some slick dance moves in an elf costume today. Happy holidays!

Betocracy: Create Prediction Markets

Betocracy is a new site offering easy to use tools for the creation of prediction markets on websites. Though in Beta, Betocracy has markets covering the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008 as well as a Stock Market for the popular Second-Life multi-player role-playing universe. Betocracy was created by freelance web developer Yaron Koren.

Prediction Markets are best understood like a combination of a stock market and the bookie at a horse race, where users bet for or against events occurring.  The event can be anything: will the horse win the race, will the stock price go up, or, who will win the election?  The Washington Stock Exchange is a similar product dedicated to the political arena.  The website uses points instead of money, so there is no real risk of great loss (other than the time spent on the websites using predictive markets).

However, Betocracy is quick to point out that even the points reflect real value in the terms of predictive data. According to Yaron: 

"...the administrators of a site can always choose to reward those who have done well on their markets, where laws permit."

It will be interesting to see if Betocracy can truly play fortune teller.

Special thanks to LBJ for assisting with the information in this article.

Search Engine Marketing Glossary: Online Marketing Resource

A few month's ago a friend of mine took on a new online search marketing job which called for extensive keyword purchasing experience. She asked me for the best search engine marketing resources and I pointed to a number of search marketing sites, podcasts and resources. Unfortunately, I did not realize that Aaron Wall, a well respected search engine marketing guru, had pulled together a glossary to help online marketers with this very question. Search Engine Marketing Glossary is a wonderful resource for online marketers and business folks alike as it offers easy access to a plethora of web marketing terminology.  For example, if you are looking to find the definition for the word "keyword" you can jump to the letter "k" and find not only a definition of the term but also a number of terms related to the word as follows:

A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for.

Long tail and brand related keywords are typically worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.

It is also worth noting that each term in the glossary is an anchor on the page so it can be linked to directly, like I have linked to the word "keyword" here. The Search Engine Marketing Glossary is managed by Aaron Wall but users can suggest updates or feedback.

Editor's note: After turning down the first four ReviewMe requests, I finally found a product I wanted to write about in the Search Engine Marketing Glossary. This is a sponsored article.

Holiday Gift Guides For 2006

Have you been too busy to focus on holiday shopping thus far? There is still time to shop if you know what you are looking for. If not, there are a number of gift guides online. I have consolidated some of them below. If you have a blogger or web 2.0 fanatic to buy for you might think about one of the three following options:

1.) The FooBar Poster - You have probably seen this poster by eBoy as it has been popping up everywhere.
2.) Cool tee shirts - I particularly enjoy the tee shirt collection by Mule Design. Hugh MacLeod from Gaping Void offers gear while Begin Five also of online comic fame also offers some tees.  Finally, don't forget TECH cocktail gear!
3.) Lap desk - Ideal for night blogging.

Online music or movie gift cards (i.e. iTunes, etc) are also great gifts if you are looking for other options. UPDATE: Digg gear is pretty sweet too! If  you are shopping for gifts for a gadget lovers you might want to check out:

FM Holiday Gadget Guide
CNet Holiday Gift Guide
Extreme Tech Geek Gift Guide

If you are shopping for a gift for a man, Playboy and MenEssential give pointers:

Playboy Holiday Gift Guide
Holiday Gift Guide by MenEssentials

Uncrate has put together gift guides for women and children:

Women's Holiday Gift Guide
Kid's Holiday Gift Guide

Make Magazine has created a fantastic gift guide for open source hardware and software development:

The Open Source Gift Guide

Finally, if you are looking for the perfect gift for someone at the office you might want to check out the Office Toy Store. Happy Shopping!