SOMEWHAT FRANK

GrubHub Food Delivery Search Expanding

Even with a drawer full of take-out menus finding places to order food can sometimes be a tough task. GrubHub.com, a Chicago-based food delivery and menu startup developed by Mike Evans and Matt Maloney, looks to help you find a place to order food and has been making some moves to improve.  Placing over $1M in delivery orders per month in Chicago and have now focused their efforts on expansion.

The site enables users to enter an address and then GrubHub returns restaurants that deliver to that address. GrubHub displays a menu, reviews, and coupons for a restaurant. Users can register and place a food order online.

Happy BlogDay 2007

BlogDay is here again. BlogDay is the one day celebration of the blogosphere created by Nir Ofir also of BlogTV fame. BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On BlogDay bloggers highlight or recommend five other blogs to their blog visitors aiding the discovery of new blogs on the Web.

SplashCast's Shiny New Player

SplashCast Media, a Portland-based media player startup, has launched an update to its exisiting SplashCast media player. SplashCast has added a number of features to the player as it continues to improve the product that launched earlier this year.

Text2Store Local Deals Widget Launches

Text2Store, a Chicago-based startup, leverages text messaging to send deals and coupons directly to your cellphone. Text2Store recently launched a local deals widget that shares the revenue of each click-through. Similar to other advertising and affiliate programs, anytime you help someone save money with a coupon text message accessed from your site, Text2Store will pay you 25% of the negotiated income with the advertiser.

Sk*rt A Social News Site For Women

Women looking for a place to find interesting content recommendations should look no further than Sk*rt. Sk*rt offers a social news site of "pure goodness" which is geared towards topics and interests that women might like. The platform which could be deemed a Digg-clone offers content discovery via social recommendations.

PlayboyU College Network Examined

PlayboyU was launched last week by Playboy to offer a social entertainment community for college students only.  Focused solely on taking advantage of all the "good things" and "good times" that happen in college, PlayboyU offers a new web "campus" for students to play. Interestingly, PlayboyU is built on the social network application platform, Ning.

Do You Need A Hug (Shirt)?

CuteCircuit thinks you need a hug as the company has created an innovative shirt called the Hug Shirt. Leveraging Bluetooth technology and SMS text messaging, the Hug Shirt lets you send a hug to your fellow hug shirt wearing friends via your mobile phone. Each hug you send is played back like a message. So if you tap on your left shoulder the receiver of the message will feel that tap wherever they receive the message.

Are You A Shareaholic?

Shareaholic makes it easy to submit the web page you are currently viewing in a Firefox browser to Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Google bookmarks, Magnolia, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Twitter.

Moo Stickers Arrive (Literally)

Moo, a UK-based printing startup, puts an unique and personalized spin on traditional items like business cards and notecards. Moo loves to print as they continue to roll out additional offerings. In mid-July, Moo announced the launch of Moo StickerBooks.

New YouTube Video Ads, Google Embeds Maps, PlayboyU & MyNYTimes Launch, the Attention Economy, Microsoft's Tafiti Research Project & Bacn In Your Inbox

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by, one of my skinnyCorp friends, Harper Reed as he captured some fresh Threadless designs.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 08.26.2007

Truveo Video Search: Tim Tuttle Explains

Truveo, a video search startup which was acquired by AOL in 2006, recently redesigned the site and I have to say it is super. It offers a new layout that slices and dices its aggregation of videos from across the Web so users are bound to uncover videos that would have previously remained buried.

BookSwim: Netflix For Books

Do you get your movies sent to you via Netflix? Well, bookworms you might want to do the same with your books with BookSwim. BookSwim is an online book rental library club that recently launched to beta. Netflix proved the model could work with videos so it only makes sense that it would be emulated in the book industry.

SmartLink Feeds Added To AdaptiveBlue

AdaptiveBlue, a startup that focuses on a smarter browsing experience, has created feed output for its SmartLinks functionality. This is feature called appropriately, SmartLink Feeds will make it easy for anyone to take the feed from a SmartLinks widget and display it on their blog, website or personalized homepage. SmartLinks are collected via AdaptiveBlue's BlueOrganizer. According to AdaptiveBlue CEO, Alex Iskold:

"Anyone can create SmartLinks feeds with BlueOrganizer and instantly publish stylish lists of their favorite things."

Aside from allowing users to add their own links, AdaptiveBlue will also publish and update popular SmartLink Feeds for anyone to paste into their own sites including, New York Times Bestsellers, Netflix Top Rentals, Amazon Hot Gadgets, iTunes and others.

Shuzak: A Social Network For Geeks?

Shuzak a social network startup devoted solely to geeks caught me off guard. Do geeks need a social network when there are thousands of social networks on the web filled with geeks? Nonetheless, I registered for Shuzak to see what exactly it was all about. I filled out profile and then Shuzak tried to match me with some that I would have "Karma" with. For geek defined check out this video.

AniBOOM: Animation Community & Toolkit

AniBOOM is an animation community that partners with animators around the world to help distribute their original content. AniBoom offers an array of animation tools for animators to  create, watch and share a wide range of animated video shorts and series. Novice animators with great ideas can even try and turn them into reality by leveraging the community.