SOMEWHAT FRANK

TECH cocktail DC 2 Coming Soon - RSVP Today

I am pleased to announce TECH cocktail DC 2 will be Thursday, April 24, 2008 in Washington, DC. The social mixer event will look to unite the DC, Maryland and Virginia bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and other business professionals interested in the technology arena for an evening of fun as we showcase and amplify the local tech scene.

Here are the details:

Date: Thursday, April 24, 2008
Time: 6:30pm - 9pm
Venue: MCCXXIII: 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20036  (Map)
Cost: $0 - It’s free!
RSVP: Sign up here --> techcocktaildc2.eventbrite.com

The event is sponsored by AOL and Viget Labs - and there are a few sponsorship spots open so reach out if you are interested in supporting the movement. Startups will be showing off their stuff at the event and there are still a few demo spots open so let me know if you are interested. It should be a great time.

Also don't forget...we are hosting a TECH CONFERENCE on May 29th - SIGN UP because it is pretty much going to rock!

SkiSpace: Bode Miller's Skiing Social Network

You may recall Bode Miller, the USA Olympic silver medalist skier and 2008 Alpine Skiing World Cup Champion, apparently he is doing more than just skiing these days as he has teamed with PathConnect to create SkiSpace, a social network for skiers and  snowboarders. SkiSpace, not to be confused with MySpace, launched in December 2007 and offers a place for skiers and snowboards online.

Diigo v3: Improves Social Bookmarking

Diigo, a Reno, Nevada based startup I previously covered when it launched Web Slides, just launched version 3.0 which offers an integration of a number of social bookmarking and research services that create a powerful set of community tools.

What is new with Diigo v3? The Diigo v3 launch includes a completely new user interface and code base, hundreds of new features and most notably a tightly integrated social networking with knowledge-sharing. This improvement puts Diigo in direct competition with delicious and other web 2.0 social bookmarking products.

Poll: Will Technology Replace Business Cards?

I attend lots of industry events and I don't know how many times I either run out of business cards or find myself cardless but thanks to technology it is a lot easier to connect. LinkedIn recently joined Facebook and a number of other sites that have created iPhone experiences which makes it easy to contact people you meet immediately thus online identity has replaced one of the features of offline identity - the business card.

Ping.fm Posts To All Your Microblogs At Once

Microblogging has made it easy to share but with a number of services available one can get overloaded with options making it difficult to keep them all updating the time. Rather than have to stick to one service you can post to a number of services at one time with the help of Ping.fm. Other services like socialthing! and HelloTxt offer similar functionality but I thought it was worth mentioning yet another service as we all look for the ultimate one stop shop for managing all our microblogging needs at once.

CBS Launches Rev-Share Ad Network

CBS Television stations today announced the launch of the CBS Local Ad Network as it looks to get into the advertising and widget distribution game by connecting with local bloggers and social media sites on the Web.

At first glance, I thought CBS was looking to incorporate blogs and other social media content into the local CBS news sites but after reading on that is not the case at all, it turns out CBS is just leveraging bloggers looking to generate some revenue on their blog or social media content. Network participants can place what CBS is calling a widget (with a huge skyscraper ad unit) on their sites and in return receive a rev-share. The widget pushes links to only CBS content rather than tying in social media content like I thought it should. Nothing new here. It might be the right program for bloggers or social media content producers looking for a way to monetize and not sell ads though I have no idea what the rev-share looks like and it would be worth a look before jumping in and giving CBS ad impressions.

Facebook Chat Details & Video

As reported on TechCrunch earlier this week, Facebook is working on a chat functionality. They held a press conference today and TechCrunch recorded this exclusive video demo of Facebook Chat. The presenter in the video is Peter Deng, the product manager for Facebook Chat, who made it clear that this is a preliminary version of the product. Facebook Chat appears to be something that available when you are on Facebook with the ability to turn it on and off.

Caroline McCarthy also offered some additional Facebook IM details in her report on The Social which offered the photo below.

Photo Credit: Caroline McCarthy of The Social

Chicago Tribune Embraces The iPhone

The Tribune Company, an old Chicago-based newspaper giant, has just announced an iPhone compartable version of one of its flagship properties, the Chicago Tribune. As a former Tribune employee it gives me great joy to see my old hometown paper now viewable on my iPhone at this URL: chicagotribune.com/iphone.

They have not enabled an auto redirect to when viewing ChicagoTribune.com from an iPhone but it does promote the iPhone option. I figure the auto redirect on the iPhone will be coming soon. Congrats to the Tribune on embracing the new device. Thanks to Steve Rubel for pointing it out.

Editor's Note: The SF Bit as I am calling it is new short or brief format post on Somewhat Frank which will basically offer a quick informative post or bit rather longer article format. Let me know if you like it and I will keep them flowing.

Polyvore: Flickr For The Fashion Shopper

Are you a fashion trend setter? If so, you might want to check out Polyvore. Polyvore is a social fashion site where users can create arrange outfits or inspiration boards to share where you and others can potentially buy the included items. Polyvore enables users to drag and drop clothing items or snag items from the Web to create new outfits which are then tied into various shopping sites and could offer some interesting revenue sharing options. Launched in February 2007 and backed by Benchmark Capital, Polyvore recently hit the one million outfit mark.

Video: A Look Inside TechStars

If you are startup looking for a little funding and guidance you might want to check into one of the incubator program like TechStars. Nestled just outside of Denver in Boulder, Colorado the TechStars program is in its second year and still accepting hungry startup founders for this years applicants. Throughout the summer program, founders can get up to $15,000 in seed funding, are surrounded by like-minded entrepreneurs, work in great space downtown Boulder, and are given access to learn from an line-up of fabulous mentors. Apply today - the 2008 deadline is March 31, 2008.

AOL Buys Bebo - KickApps Next?, Yahoo Semantic, Flickr Video Coming, Facebook IM Coming, YouTube Goes Hi-Res & SXSW Coverage

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken while recording this Blog Talk Radio episode with Kris "Croncast" Smith and Rox from BeachWalks.tv at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Photo thanks to Roxanne Darling.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 03.16.2008

Video: What's Up Next For BricaBox?

Brica Brica What? BricaBox, the social content platform which I covered previously here and here, that launched a few weeks ago offers users the ability to display structured content with social features. After many attempts I finally got a chance to sit down with BricaBox founder and CEO Nate Westheimer while attending FOWA Miami 2008 which is the latest SOMEWHAT FRANK TV episode. You can subscribe by visiting SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.

blippr Simple Social Recommendations

Looking for something new to read, watch or play? blippr, a startup created by Tag Team Interactive, offers a social utility which aims to facility social recommendations about books, games, movies, music, and (soon) TV from your friends. With blippr users can compile lists of things that they love and "blip" them which is similar to voting for an item (i.e. digg). blippr enables users to discover, recommend, and organize media and share it with their network of friends.

A blippr lifestream view enables users to see the rest of the recently added items thus offering up social recommendations. These recommendations can be be tagged, rated and commented on thus added to the conversation. Users can also purchase a recommended book, movie or video via likes to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders. blippr also leverages classic Web 2.0 features like tags, comments and ratings from the rest of the community.

Surprise! AOL Buys Bebo for $850 million

AOL buying Bebo for $850 million was a pleasant surprise to wake up to this morning. Wow!  I think this is a smart move for AOL as Bebo is currently the third largest social network on the Web behind Facebook and MySpace. With AIM offering one of the larger social graphs on the Web but a turnstile of online social networking profile site attempts in the last two years it looks like AOL has finally decided to invest externally in a solution with a lot users and page views. This just adds to the a number of other acquisitions that recently occurred in the social platforms group which include Goowy and Yedda.

Sprout Builder Easy Flash Toolkit Now Public

Creating flashy multimedia pieces of content for the Web might have just gotten a little easier as Sprout Builder opened its doors to the public today. This Hawaii-based startup first popped up on my radar at DEMO 08 as they first reveled Sprout Builder. The Flash toolkit makes it easy for anyone to create a rich interactive page, widget or part of a page without knowing how to write a line of code.