SOMEWHAT FRANK

ikordo Helps You Organize Meetings

I hate long meetings when I feel that something could be solved with a simpler method like AIM, email, a text message or a phone conversation. When a meeting is needed, coordinating meetings can be as time consuming as the actual meeting itself. If you have a personal assistant you probably do not have to worry about this but if you do not then you probably feel my pain. ikordo, created by UK-based Volutio, offers a product that help facilitate organizing the meeting for you by putting into an organized system that leverages various communication streams to lock down your meeting times.

LOUD3R Network: Quick News For Enthusiasts

If you are a motorcycle or political enthusiast than listen up because you are going to like this. LOUD3R, a network for niche enthusiast offerings, has launched a couple of different aggregation sites. FAST3R the motorcycle site and VOT3R the political site are pulled together by leveraging a semantic publishing engine used in combination with natural language processing and human intelligence the engine selects and publishes the best and most interesting content to the network. Users can also contribute content and comments to the site.

Picnik Premium Photo Editing Tools Now Free

Picnik, the Seattle-based online photo editing application, has announced that their suite of premium features are now available to everyone for free and will be supported by online advertising. Picnik wants everyone to have access to their fabulous features and will offer a premium service for people that would rather not see ads and are looking for a little more support.

I recently reviewed flauntR which offers a totally free online photo editing option which could give Picnik some competition. I am happy to see Picnik go free since it will mean I will now be able to leverage all their features for free via the Picnik Flickr integration. TechCrunch offers additional perspective and speculation on the Picnik move.

Has Your Blog Been Blogged?

Looking to explore and find a few new blogs on the Web? Blogged is blog directory launched earlier this week to aid discovery and exploration of the blogosphere. Blogged is self-funded by founders Kenneth Yeh and Gladys Kong and is powered by readers and also employs a full-time editorial staff to maintain the integrity of the directory.

BricaBox Social Content Platform Launches

BricaBox, the NY-based structured content platform I previously reviewed, publicly launched today to enable anyone to create access and create these rich content experiences with ease. Funded sole by its founders BricaBox has been refered to a "wiki" on steroids (don't tell MLB or Congress) or "WordPress for structured content" as it offers a way for publishers tools to better display listings and such. It should also be noted that BricaBox offers social capabilities to enable community and sharing features which are sometimes confused with those of Ning or other social networking platform options.

Six Startups Demo at TECH cocktail Chicago 7

I returned to my hometown of Chicago last week to co-host TECH cocktail Chicago 7. Though the weather was pretty cold in Chicago, the event pulled in about five hundred technology enthusiasts, founders, startups, bloggers and VC's. As a facilitator of the event it is gratifying to see the community come out in such numbers especially with the weather so cold.

The evening was kicked off with some TECH cocktail news which included the release of the newly revamped TECH cocktail website and the announcement of the first annual TECH cocktail CONFERENCE. Both of which were conversations points for Eric Olson and I throughout the event but the real focus was on six fresh new Midwest startups that showed off their stuff at the event.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Featured As 'Must Know' Blog

I got word this morning that TheMarker, Israel’s prominent business magazine and Haaretz, one of Israel’s largest newspapers, featured SOMEWHAT FRANK in a spread titled "The Blogs That Every Israeli Startup Should Know." 

Xdrive Releases Desktop Lite Via Adobe AIR

Xdrive, an AOL owned storage company, today released a new desktop offering built using the Adobe AIR technology. The product called Xdrive Desktop Lite offers an enhanced user interface  which allows users to easily upload files and folders right from the hard drive, desktop, USB devices, or removable storage drives directly into your Xdrive web storage. This marks the first time that Mac users will have an opportunity to leverage Xdrive.

iPhone Social Network Pondering, Facebook Fatigue, Oscar Updates, IE8 Beta Coming, Mixx Updates, imagine it! & Olympic Bloggers

Photo of the Week: I visited the skinnyCorp office with TECH cocktail co-founder Eric Olson this past week and snapped this photo of the their workspace. Those threadless folks are pretty rad! The space kind of reminded me of a cross between Pee Wee's Playhouse, without the talking chair of course, and MAKE Magazine.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.24.2008

Video: skinnyCorp threadless Office Visit

If you are a hip t-shirt junkie you probably have found something on community driven t-shirt site threadless created by Chicago-based skinnyCorp. skinnyCorp offers some great community driven websites which include:

threadless is a popular t-shirt design community driven e-commerce site.

Naked & Angry is a high quality clothing from fabric patterns submitted and chosen by the brand’s audience.

Extra Tasty is a community driven drink recipe site.

Yay Hooray is an 'old-school' forum used to help skinnyCorp learn how to make community-driven sites on the Web.

They have also have a few others. I visited the Chicago-based skinnyCorp headquarters this past week and captured some of it on video.

Twitter Feature Request: @ Replies To Mobile

Twitter is a great communication tool. I use it all the time. I initially enabled mobile notifications but found I was getting a constant stream of Twitter text messages which can be somewhat distracting. So I turned off mobile notifications except for direct messages. But I still find that I miss "@ replies" since they cannot currently be sent to my mobile device.

I just put in a feature request directly with Twitter via their online form. I would love to be able to get "@ replies" sent directly to my mobile device just the same as direct messages are. Brian Caldwell and David Robinson agree with me.  Does anyone else want to see this feature added?

UPDATE: Kevin Lawver just sent me a work around via direct Twitter message which gets your @ replies sent to your mobile device. By simply sending Twitter track @username you can get any @ replies of your usersname sent directly to you mobile device. Thank you Kevin - you are awesome!

Eyespot Sharpens Its Video Editing Toolset

Eyespot, the online video editing site that I previously reviewed with high regard, has released a new set of tools to make personalization and syndication of videos. The tools include the ability to share to a mobile device or to a number of other video platforms with just one click.

TECH cocktail Remixes With TECH CONFERENCE

TECH cocktail, the events startup that was created by Eric Olson and I back in May 2006, has made a couple of exciting moves today. First we launched a substantial redesign of the TECH cocktail website that we have been working on for the last couple months. In addition, to stay true to our mission of helping to amplify the technology signal in local communities we are have announced the first ever TECH cocktail CONFERENCE (or TECH CONFERENCE for short). The event full day conference will take place in Chicago on May 29, 2008 and will be followed up by our popular mixer event. Register now - it should be a great event!

LiquidTalk: iTunes For Business

Keeping up to speed with the latest corporate or team communications while on the road or away from the office can be a bit daunting. Many companies leverage video or audio messages which cannot be accessed from outside the corporate firewall. LiquidTalk, a Chicago-based startup, offers a business solution to help keep people in the corporate environment in the loop via the devices (iPhones and BlackBerry) that we all have on them at all times. It is like having iTunes for business as it syncs all your corporate communication messages to your device for on the go consumption on your own terms.

GenieTown Service Marketplace Launches

Looking for a little help on your next home project? If you live in the San Francisco area you might be in luck as GenieTown, a Palo Alto-based startup founded by a group of Stanford entrepreneurs, officially opened to the world today. GenieTown offers a platform for anyone looking for local services to either browse through a broad range of specific service providers or post a job request and invite qualified responses. GenieTown creates an eBay-like marketplace for services.