SOMEWHAT FRANK

Google Acquires DoubleClick, 10 Hot Startups, Social Aggregators, FoundRead Born & Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us

Photo of the week: This San Francisco Trolley photo taken by, friend and co-founder of TECH cocktail Eric Olson, was the first photo I found on Flickr related to the Web 2.0 Expo this week in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.15.07

The Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us
I just arrived in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It should be an exciting week of sessions, demos and launch parties in the city by the bay. If you are in town and want to meetup tonight (Sunday) check out this little meetup but keep in mind, this is NOT a TECH cocktail event like the one we just hosted in Chicago - it is just a meetup in SF.

Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
Makes sense as Google is truly an advertising company. Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. That is a lot of cash. Rumor has it they are buying the Internet just after the 2016 Chicago Olympics. :-) 

Birth of the Social Aggregator
Social Networks, Blogs and Startpages have long been treated as separate categories of web-based applications. According to Widgify, it is about to change. 

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups To Date
Rev2.org lists its take on the most successful web 2.0 startups. With FeedBurner’s domination of the feed management space I would probably add them to this list. But you probably know already I am a FeedBurner fan.

New RSS 2.0 spec site deployed
Dave Winer has been working on a project to "future-safe" the Harvard site that houses the RSS 2.0 spec. Yesterday, he redirected from the old site to the new one. Congrats Dave on the new site! 

Search for People Across the Social Network Sites
yoName is a search engine that allows you to search friends (not just) on these 6 big networks. 

Introducing FoundRead
GigaPapi GigaOm is at it again as he has launched FoundRead, a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Great idea Om, congrats on the launch. 

Hot Startup Checklist: Spam A Lot?
An interesting chart of Valleywag (masters of the pie charts, graphs, slides, etc.) highlighting some of the most promising startups.

AOL Feeds Now Powered by FeedBurner

Since I was pretty tied up with TECH cocktail 4 the past couple of days, I did not get a chance to weigh in on the fact that FeedBurner, the Chicago-based feed management company, had announced the signing of a deal to manage the feeds for the AOL Network. In talking with FeedBurner CEO Dick Costolo at TECH cocktail 4, he was very pleased about the deal and mentioned the announcement forthcoming (the following morning).

Aside from my Chicago connection, I have been working with FeedBurner since coming on to work for AOL so I am happy to have the deal finalized - they have a great team and offer publishers services. AOL will now be able to leverage all of FeedBurner's metrics and FeedFlare to tie into social media services like Netscape, Digg and Facebook and feed advertising. Congrats to FeedBurner on continuing to grow an impressive publisher network from their home-base in "Sweet Home Chicago."

TECH cocktail 4: Wow, that was fun!

With April flurries plaguing the Midwest the past few days, TECH cocktail 4 offered the Chicago technology and entrepreneurial community a place to get out of the cold spring weather to enjoy an evening of fun. With a number of activities and another excellent turnout which included an appearance by the AudioSnacks mascot a 6 plus foot llama, I think this might have been our best TECH cocktail yet. I think this might have been our best TECH cocktail yet. The venue, John Barleycorn Wrigleyville, was ideal, the demos were great, the sponsors rocked and the guests were wonderful. Unlike the other events, I had more time at this event to mingle with everyone. It was a lot of fun. I think Frank "the Tank" in the movie Old School played by Will Ferrell expresses how I feel about last night's TECH cocktail 4 the best with this quote:

Frank: I had an awesome time!
Beanie: I know that you had an awesome time. I think the entire town knows you had an awesome time.
[to Mitch]
Beanie: And wouldn't you want those times to keep on going?

Of course we will continue to have additional TECH cocktail events. There will be some interesting news coming on the TECH cocktail site in the next few days. Stay tuned by subscribing to updates via RSS or email.

Thank you to everyone that sponsored (shown in the video above). Also thanks to all the great startups that demo'ed their products last night. They included:

Interactive Mediums - Offers innovative text message voting and social interactivity.
Menuism - Rate not only the restaurant but also the specific dish or dishes.
Parkwhiz - Innovative parking search and parking spot marketplace.
Text2Store - Get great deals from local stores via text message.
TimeXchange - Manage your consulting time in a social setting.
Zaplee - VOIP call center software built around skype.

Menuism was the crowd favorite but they all have some wonderful offerings - congrats to all!

Thank you to all our sponsors (see video below) for making TECH cocktail possible. Thanks to everyone that attended. I hope you had a pleasant evening. Obviously, thank you to co-founder Eric Olson. Also I would like to thank my family and friends who they have been extremely helpful and supportive. Finally, thank you to both Eric's (FeedBurner) and my (AOL) employers as they have been extremely supportive of our TECH cocktail creation.

Photos from the event can be found here tagged: techcocktail4.

Check out some of these other reviews of TECH cocktail 4 on The Hot Iron, Olson's Observations and Networking Insight.

Yoono Sharing & Suggestion Plugin

Yoono, a user powered suggestion community, will make it easy for its users to make more suggestions via the browser next week when it launches the "Buzz It" plugin. Yoono already offers browsing suggestions as you are visiting various web locations. The new browser applet will enable users to bookmark or clip interesting links, images, videos and photos from any web site and share them with others or publish them to a blog or MySpace page. "Buzz It" items are saved to a user's Buzzlog which can then be made public or kept private.

Yoono currently reports 600,000 users in its community and "Buzz It" offers them an easier way to share and annotate rich-media content right from the browser. For example, the screen-shot above shows clipping a YouTube video. In observing a demo of Yoono "Buzz It" from CEO Pascall Josselin I was impressed by number of features that Yoono offered. I also took note of Yoono's social aspects which could easily turn into a new social network for meeting people with the same clipping and browsing preferences. Yoono a dating site? Not really, but like any social networking site you can befriend new people through your interactions with  the product. As Pascall puts it:

“Yoono is a people aggregator, allowing everyone to capture and share personalized booklets of content along with their views, perspective and highlights...And, not only is It available from any browser, exportable to the PC, or sharable with others through RSS or email, data can also be printed, saved to the desktop, and published across their portfolio of online profiles, blogs, and networks.”

I think that pretty much sums it up as feature-rich Yoono packs a lot of punch. If you give Yoono a try, it is guaranteed to let you know what it does know in the form of recommendations and suggestions.

FreshBooks For Web Invoices & More

What are some good invoicing applications to use? A friend of mine recently asked me this very question and I surprisingly drew a blank. So I made it my mission to seek out an anwser. FreshBooks, a Toronto-based startup, offers an online invoicing and time tracking application that nicely fits the bill. 

I do not consider invoicing systems the least bit moving but I was pleasantly surprised with FreshBooks as it offers some design elements that resemble a 37signals product. With FreshBooks a company can customize the layout of the application and all of the invoices and reports. I have included a screen-shot to the left of sample invoice I created (click it to enlarge). Interestingly, FreshBooks recently integrated with the 37signals project management product Basecamp to offer a super small business mashup and API.

Aside from its design elements, Basecamp integration and invoice customizations, FreshBooks' billing options caught my attention as you can send bills via email or by ground mail with return envelopes directly from FreshBooks. FreshBooks also offers storage for documents and the ability to create reports. 

Bottom-line: FreshBooks offers a free online application for managing your small business invoices and time-sheets.

Death to DRM, Future of RSS, AOL'Sphere It Widget, Zillow Relaunches, Blog Search Wars, Google My Maps & P2P Loans

Photo of the week: robobunny by Courtney Brooke. Happy Easter.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.08.07

DRM-Free Music
EMI announced DRM-free music earlier in the week and now Microsoft is hinting at doing the same. Is this the death of DRM?

500 million+!!! AOL'Sphere Goes Live
AOL and Sphere quietly turned on Sphere It in their AOL News, Sports and Entertainment articles. The Sphere It widget is great - I have one too on all my posts as it offers users the ability to find related content. Love it. If you would like one for your site be sure to check out the Sphere tools.

Google Personalizes Maps
Google Maps launched a new feature to its maps product this week (April 5, 2007) called My Maps with offers users the ability to personalize a Google Map. My Maps enables anyone to draw, plot or color a Google Map without having to know an ounce of coding knowledge thus bringing simplified personal mapping to the masses.

Yahoo Testing Alpha (Beta) Multi Search
Search Engine Land covers Yahoo's launch of Alpha a new search experience. Alpha is really more of a multi-search tool that submits your query to multiple sources. It really reminds me of AOL FullView Search.

10 Things You Can Do With Mixed Media RSS
Marshall Kirkpatrick, of SplashCast Media, presents a list of ways to leverage mixed media feeds produced by SplashCast.  He provides big-picture use-cases and explains how you can use other products I have previously reviewed like Tumblr, FeedBurner, ZapTxt and Rasasa to create some interesting feed mashups.

The Future of RSS
Read/Write Web looks at RSS today and asks if RSS is evolving into a tool for delivering complex, semantically rich information. A great article for anyone looking for information on RSS.

Technorati and the blog search wars
Mathew Ingram dissects Technorati's recent state of the blogosphere. It is still interesting to see how fast Technorati.com has been growing: over 9 million unique visitors in March, up 141 per cent in a single quarter, and double-digit growth every month in page views as well. Not bad.

Financing Web Work with Prosper.com
Prosper.com enables peer-to-peer loans for startups and anyone looking to do their own thing. If you are looking for funding you may want to check it out.

Zillow Relaunch - Adds Its Own Q&A Service
Every home in the Zillow database has its own dedicated page. Any user can now also add photos and information about any home and its neighborhood to the site. Users can also indicate if a home is for sale, and the asking price, as well as additional info.

Weblin’s Avatars Surf the Web with You
Kristen Nicole reviews the recent launch of Weblin, a program that lets you create a web avatar that travels with you on your web journey. According to the article when you come across a site where there are other Weblins, you’ll be able to see them and strike up a conversation. Chatting avatars on the web - interesting!

iminlikewithyou, an interesting new look at online flirting
iminlikewithyou is all about flirting, well, the art of flirting. Users sign up for the service and answer a few basic questions about themselves. Photos can be added as well as other personal information to be rewarded with valuable flirting points.

Widgets Arrive for the iPod
The iPod is still largely a closed development platform, but that's not stopping some folks from creating widgets that run on it. Steve Rubel points to two products from Kooloroo that bring handy information to the iPod.

End of the Web's Free Ride?

End of the web's free ride? Doubtful. As a former Tribune Co. employee it was surprising to see the Washington Post article published today (April 7, 2007) saying that, soon-to-be Tribune Co. owner and real estate billionaire, Samuel Zell was set on trying to make news aggregators pay for newspaper.com content. Though Sam is quick to admit he is new to the newspaper industry, he was quoted saying:

"If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be? Not very."

In an age of an open, attention economy of syndication and new media, Sam Zell's direction seems so 5 years ago. Don't Google and other news aggregators provide a service to these news sources by sending them relevant traffic so that they can serve up their own ads and generate revenue? Yes. Mathew Ingram offers some additional perspective on this topic by saying:

"On the contrary, newspapers get a tremendous benefit from being indexed by Google News, just as websites get a tremendous benefit from being indexed by Google’s search."

Mathew is right on the money. Though Google has been reported to be paying for some of its Google News content, publishers have the power to restrict the amount of content that is syndicated and most newspapers do this by only syndicating a one sentence news brief thus sending most traffic back to the source site. While I do not know the entire context around Sam Zell's quote to make aggregators pay, I find it rather disturbing as it could land Tribune in some trouble if this philosophy is  applied, especially in a time when micro-publishers and citizen journalists with less overhead thus higher profit margin are out there covering the news.

It will be intriguing to watch what Tribune does with its content, I hope they decide to capitalize on the ad revenues from it rather than the revenue generated from aggregator rights. No disrespect to Sam Zell, he is a billionaire and I am not, but if I could give one bit of advice I would suggest he investigate the recent changes in the media landscape in regard to paid vs. free content strategies before taking the helm at Tribune. I would point to Washington Post Newsweek Interactive a competitor that "gets it" and could serve as a great role model for Tribune. I guess my point is, if Tribune is going to turn the clock back and dive into the old "people should pay for our online content" mindset then Tribune is totally f*cked - I would hate to see that happen.

ThinkFree Unleashes 3 New Offerings

ThinkFree, an online office production suite I recently reviewed, has released three new features which include an API to the ThinkFree Viewer, a WordPress Plugin and instant upload to ThinkFree DocExchange. We will take a look at these new options a little more closely below.

ThinkFree Viewer API  - Now you can with the release of the ThinkFree Viewer API. The API will enable developers to integrate the ThinkFree Viewer into any product to display an array of file types on any system regardless of the OS and software installed. Below is an example of the ThinkFree Viewer in action. What would you mashup with it?

ThinkFree Viewer WordPress Plugin - WordPress users can now rejoice at the fact that you can add ThinkFree documents into their blog posts and readers can view them directly from the browser without the need of office software. You can find the ThinkFree Viewer WordPress plugin here.

Instant ThinkFree Doc Upload - Looking to position itself as the "Flickr of Office 2.o" ThinkFree file uploads will soon be directly uploaded to the ThinkFree DocExchange, a publicly accessible area, where users can view, comment and rate documents from the ThinkFree community.

ThinkFree offers a great online office suite and its constant improvements like these that should keep its users happy and ahead of the pack of Office 2.0 options.

Sportsvite: Find Local Sports and Players

Looking to play a team sport like baseball or football but unable to field a full team? You are not alone. With Sportsvite you may be able to scream - GAME ON! Sportsvite, a New York and Northern Virginia based startup, offers a place on the web to organize active sports and connect with other players for league teams, pick-up games and activity groups.

Sportsvite offers a unique opportunity to connect with local athletically inclined people. With Sportvite, users post sporting interests, photos and other information to enable community members to connect to play a sport. Sportsvite offers users the ability to create games, teams and find players and post listings. Sportsvite users can also manage their sports schedule on the site. Sportsvite is a free service looking generate revenue from advertising and listings.

Sportsvite offers a unique opportunity to connect with local athletically inclined people. I did a few searches for Sportsvite users that were interested in baseball in my local area and was pleasantly surprised by the number of results. I also liked the added touch that the rotating sports quotes that appear along the top left edge of the site. Check out this humorous video about how Sportsvite might be able to help you - stop playing with yourself.

Bottom-line: Sportsvite offers a social network to help connect users with sports lovers looking to play team sports.

Online Video Editing Showdown

User-contributed video has been a champion of the web 2.0 movement, making it possible to "watch the web" on sites like YouTube, Google Video and AOL Uncut Video. With this trend, the need to edit videos online has become increasingly more apparent. This article will highlight a number of online video options to help determine the best offerings. To evaluate the options in action I have taken the same five clips to recreate the video titled Geek vs. Nerd with each of the online video editing options. The clips for Geek vs. Nerd were shot near the AOL booth in the hallway of the CommunityNext conference.

Eyespot offers a surprisingly simple application that makes uploading and editing online video fun. It offers video effects, titling, audio dubbing and transitions. Aside from standard sharing features, Eyespot also offers users the ability to download their edited videos which is a differentiator from other online video editing products.

Eyespot Edited Video

Jumpcut, acquired by Yahoo, offers a feature rich online editing software. It offers an easy to use interface for managing a video time line to pull in video transitions, titling, audio dubbing and effects. It is regarded by many as the best online video editing offering and I find it difficult to disagree.  However, I was annoyed to find that Jumpcut does not allow users to download an edited video to your desktop, thus users cannot place Jumpcut videos on YouTube or other more popular video sites after editing them.

Jumpcut Edited Video

Motionbox makes uploading and sharing videos easy but it is a feature light online video editing product as it only offers simple video trimming and blending of videos. It also offers users the ability to easily add tags to a section of a video.

Motionbox Edited Video

Photobucket offers a Flash video editing suite powered by Adobe that compares well with Jumpcut. It allows users to mix video and audio in addition to pictures, which is something its competitors do not offer. Photobucket also offers transitions, effects, titling and captions which all help to create professional looking videos.

Photobucket Edited Video

Cuts.com offers short clip video editing as videos must already be uploaded to YouTube, MySpace or Google Video to be edited. Unfortunately, this is a barrier for anyone looking to blend together a few videos that are not already in one video clip; therefore, I was unable to use Cuts in this comparison piece to compare it apples to apples with the competition.

For additional video comparisons be sure to check out these articles on TechCrunch and Robin Good's Latest News.

Summary
Jumpcut currently offer the most feature rich and best online video editing application with Photobucket's Adobe powered option coming in a close second. Eyespot also offers similar features but in a simplified fashion and is the only site that offered the ability to download an edited video - this makes it easier to put edited videos on other popular video sites. You can watch the videos above to see the each product's results. However, none of the online video editing applications are robust as professional editing software like Final Cut Pro or Premiere, but the online applications mentioned all are offered for free and it’s tough to argue with free. Happy editing.

Clipperz An Online Password Manager

We all know that remembering passwords can be a real pain, but Clipperz is an online password management site that tries to remove the pain associated with remembering online passwords. Clipperz enables users a repository for all your online password information.

Clipperz offers a bookmarklet that makes quickly saving login information into "cards." The bookmarklet enables users to login directly to any saved account. Clipperz also offers users the ability to download an offline version of password information. In addition, Clipperz is working on making the sharing, printing and exporting secure information an easy process. For an another perspective on Clipperz check this recent review by CenterNetworks.

Interestingly, Clipperz uses passphrases rather than passwords to login into the site. Unfortunately, if you forget your passphrase Clipperz will not send you a reminder to help you get back into your account - you are pretty much out of luck! This could be problematic but it makes some sense since high-jacking a Clipperz account could lead to a hacker gaining control of a number of other site as well.

Bottom-line: Clipperz makes it easier to manage all your password information from one place.

Topix Lets The Community Edit the News

Topix, a local news aggregator, has launched a substantial redesign and domain change (from Topix.net to Topix.com). The new design also offers an updated citizen journalistic direction which empowers users to be the editors of the news site. This is the second redesign in the last two years for Topix.
In first visiting the new Topix, users will immediately encounter three options to select from, which include read (news), talk (in forums) and edit (the news). Selecting the read option sends users directly to the news, but the news layout has been tweaked to resemble a blog layout (see screenshots below) which many users have become comfortable with. Users can comment on every story just like a blog. The talk option takes users to the Topix forums which have been increasingly popular since their launch as they generate about 40,000 posts a day on the average. The edit option is a new option which allows users to sign up to be an editor of the site. Once an approved editor in a specific area or topic, a user can create and edit the news site. Vented editors can add content in five different ways which include promoting stories by URL, from the newswire, forums, creating stories from scratch or by emailing tips and photos from your mobile device (just text <zipcode>@topix.net). Taking a page out of the Wikipedia playbook the new Topix tries to keep its editors honest by displaying their editor history.
In talking with Blake Williams from Topix, he expressed that:

"We (Topix) are adding humanity to the site by giving users powerful tools to create and manage the news." 

I would have to agree as the new Topix.net uses a blog-like platform which has proven to be a powerful tool over the course of the last few years as blogs have risen to near the level of mainstream media in reach and exposure. Overall, I was impressed by the bold move by Topix, a total citizen powered site. It will be fascinating to see if mainstream users gravitate towards the opportunity to sculpt the news pages of their local area.

TechCrunch Gets F*ckedCompany, iTunes Subscription Service, Baseball 007 and Spinn3r & BlogRovr Launch

Photo of the Week: Opening Day 2007 for Major League Baseball is today so enjoy the photo above by Betsy titled New hat, in honor of the start of the 2007 baseball season.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.01.07

TechCrunch Has Acquired F*ckedCompany.com
Playing a little April Fools joke? Will Mike Arrington come back with a follow-up post that says something similar to the lyrics of a Marshall Mathers song? Something like:

"Hahaha, I'm just playin' ladies. You know I love you."

In all honesty, it actually would make sense for TechCrunch to take on some other brands to expand its reach.

Apple Announces Unlimited iTunes Subscription Service
iTunes will launch an all-you-can-eat subscription service in June, according to sources at Apple Inc. The service, which will cost around $100 a month, will offer unlimited downloads of videos and music tracks from iTunes’ extensive catalog.

Dave Winer’s Scripting News Celebrates 10th Anniversary
One of the oldest blogs in existence, Scripting News, run by software and web pioneer Dave Winer, is celebrating its 10th anniversary on April 1, 2007. Congrats to Dave Winer for keeping it real for so long.

The 9 Essential Posts that Every Blogger Should Know
Do you ever get blogger fog (similar to writers block)? It could happen and this article addresses 9 post ideas you could fall-back options.

10 Most Popular Brands on Digg
Pronet Advertising looks at the most popular brands surfacing on Digg these days.

Love Doesn’t Equal Loyalty: Online Dating in February 2007
I recently became single again after a couple of year relationship so I figure it best I find out what is going on with the online dating scene since I just don't have the time to go out and find people to date these days - I hardly have time to get ample sleep.

Best New Mashups: Diversions
ProgrammableWeb has posted some interesting mashups that are worth checking out if you have some free time.

BlogRovr Fetches Content From Your Favorite Blogs
BlogRovr is an interesting new way of getting blog information, on the go while you're surfing the Web. It is a download plugin for Firefox 2.0, which works cross-platform on Windows, Mac and Linux. There is currently no IE plugin, but plans to support for IE6 and IE 7 soon.

TailRank Opens Service As A Platform
TailRank, a popular blog news organizer that competes with TechMeme and Megite, has opened up its back end and will provide the service as a platform called Spinn3r for application developers who would like to add a blog index and ranking service. Spinn3r is said to have a 1 million blog index.