SOMEWHAT FRANK

Live Video: Personality Not Included Q&A

Watch and interact live over the Web! Today at 7 p.m. EST, I am chatting with Washington, DC local marketing/PR guru Rohit Bhargava the author of the new book, Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back. I am excited to be able to chat with Rohit tonight as part of the Network Solutions powered event that SOMEWHAT FRANK teamed up to host.   

I met Rohit last year as he moderated a panel that I sat on with fellow social media experts, Gary Vaynerchuk and Geoff Livingston. You can watch that video here, as I recorded it from a video camera mounted to my head. Interestingly, my three colleagues have all since published books - now doesn't that make me feel like a slacker. :) 

Personality Not Included is different from your typical marketing book and we are going to discuss it at this event. The actual event is sold out but you can watch it below thanks to BlogTV.

Video: Politics, Social Media & Wine Converge

Last week Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk visited Washington, DC. Robert Scoble was escorted around the city by Andrew Feinberg and met with a few folks on the hill. While Gary Vaynerchuk visited for a book signing. They were welcomed on Wednesday evening with a party that converged DC politicians, social media folks and wine lovers. Peter Corbett from iStrategyLabs was on location talking with folks through the evening.

The event was sponsored by CapitolValley, Scobleizer, Wine Library TV, Somewhat Frank, SocialTimes, Odeo, Freshbooks, and iStrategyLabs.

Video: Inside Intel As An Intel Insider

I got a chance to visit Intel this week as I was selected to the "Intel Insider" advisory board as the leading microprocessor chip maker anchored in Silicon Valley looks  to make some changes in the way they reach out to their customers. What does this mean? It means that Intel has embraced social media and has pulled in a dozen bloggers, video bloggers and social media/community experts to pick there brains on Intel's brand strategy. It means I will have the scoop on products and new developments at Intel. As an Intel Insider I will be a part of the conversations related to leveraging social media at Intel and lend some brand association for my own personal brand to Intel.

Why would I become an Intel Insider? First, I think it is a great experience and should be a lot of fun. Second, I want to be in the know on the latest Intel advancements and technology so I can offer it up to SOMEWHAT FRANK readers. Additionally, Intel will be supplying me with a MacBook Air which they worked with Apple to ensure an Intel chip would fit inside the slim notebook.

Intel Insiders from left: Frank Gruber, Chris Heuer, Brian Solis, Sarah Austin, Christian Perry, Justine Ezarik, Ken E Kaplan, Adriana Gascoingne, JD Lasica

Video: Why I Love Blogging

I recently spoke at BlogPotomac about social media and my love for bright shiny objects. At the event I talked with SearchMarketingGurus.com's Li Evans about why I love blogging. Check out the video (below) and find out why.

Why do you love blogging?

MagCloud: Publish Your Own Magazine

Do you want to publish your own magazine? MagCloud a byproduct of HP Labs is currently in private beta and allows anyone to create a magazine by simply uploading a hi-resolution PDF file. MagCloud does the rest from printing, mailing, subscription management, and more.

Video: Dash Express Web Connected GPS

The days of fumbling over a map while driving a car appear to be a parting memory as GPS systems have grown increasingly popular of the past few years. The iPhone and other mobile devices have adopted GPS for navigating your way through life. Some newer vehicles are adding GPS as a standard option. Portable GPS devices by Garmin, Tom Tom and other have continued to roll out improved devices. But there is a new GPS startup that is taking what Garmin and Tom Tom have been doing well and taking it a step further. 

Dash Navigation, a Sunnyvale, California startup, has launched a product called the Dash Express which not only helps you find your way it also hooks to the Internet for real-time interactivity. This connectivity can be leveraged to offer real-time traffic data based on anomous Dash users. The connection also hooks users up to Yahoo Local search to find local business and other destinations. A new open platform also means that users will be seeing more and functionality and applications offered but some of the notables currently include Twitter which sends your current location to Twitter as well as other applications like WeatherBug which offers real-time weather information based on your current location.

SocialThing 2.0

SocialThing, a Boulder, Colorado TechStars startup that aggregates all your online social updates into one slick lifestream, launched into private beta this past March in Austin, Texas at the South By Southwest Interactive event. I got a chance to get a preview of the product the week before as SocialThing showed off its stuff at TECH cocktail Boulder. I was impressed and have been using it online and via the iPhone version ever since.

Just a few weeks ago, SocialThing rolled out version 2.0 of the product. The previous version was pretty but version 2.0 looks even better than before. It offers users more control of the presentation via the settings. For example users can now sort by friends or by time. Users can also allow others to link directly to a public profile with controls on what appears in the feed. SocialThing has reworked the way they retrieve updates from all your favorite services so that updates are not pulled back in a constant flow but are batched. This allows SocialThing to indicate when there are additional updates that you might want to refresh your page to receive. Additionally, they have rolled out a new iPhone application that allows for on-the-go posting of status and trolling of your lifestream. It is pretty slick.

Join Me On Jonny's Par-Tay

JOIN ME ON JONNY'S PAR-TAY!

I will be talking about startups, Web 2.0, social media, SOMEWHAT FRANK and TECH cocktail on the video show, Jonny’s Par-tay on Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 9pm EST. The show is hosted live by DC TECH cocktailers Scott Stead and Jonny Goldstein so tune in. Here are the details:

What: A rollicking conversation with Jonny Goldstein, Scott Stead, and you! You get to interact with everyone else via live text chat.

When: Wednesday, June 18, 9-10PM EST

Where: jonnyspartay.com

Be a part of the live conversation as we talk about TECH cocktail, technology startups and more. It should be a lot of fun!

Seriosity Email Currency To Curb Overload?

Information overload attributed to email is a serious problem. There have been a few companies looking to help. I have been using AwayFind with an away message to help set email reply expectations and allow users to get ahold of me more quickly with important messages. I also recently heard about a well-funded company called Seriosity looking to put a currency around your email inbox to help combat information overload. This intrigued me so I dug a little deeper to find out just how they are looking to accomplish their mission.

Dumpr.net Turns Photos Into Art

Have you been noticing all your Flickr friends showing off their rubiks cube photos? I have. So I decided to figure out how they were doing it and I was quickly lead to Dumpr. Yes, that is its real name. Dumpr.net offers a tool set for turning your exisiting photos into works of art. Dumpr offers some unique online photo manipulations options for your photo uploads, links to photos and photos directly from your Flickr account. It enabled me to create my own rubiks cube photo just like my friends - don't worry I did not actually get trapped inside the cube to take the photo (below).

Social Media & Love For Bright Shiny Objects

I spoke yesterday as the post-lunch keynote at BlogPotomac at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. It was a lot of fun and was streamed live on the Web so I actually had family members watching along in Chicago - gotta love technology.

I spoke about my social media life and how it has helped get me where I am today. I also spoke about my love for products or "bright, shiny objects" as I refer to them. I did a brain dump of all the products and services I used routinely. I listed services I use at least once a week. I like to share because sharing is caring - so I wanted to share the list of products with you (below).

Photo thanks to Josh Hallet from hyhu.

Read Books In Small Doses On Twitter

DailyLit, a creative daily book delivery offering, has just added another means for users to consume book contents in small digestible increments by enabling a Twitter groups with daily updates. If you are interested in reading your books in short, serialized installments via Twitter, DailyLit is offering the following three titles available for free:

• TwitterID: DailyLitMagicK
  Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
  128 readers (followers)
  
• TwitterID: DailyLitPride
  Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
  68 readers (followers)
  
• TwitterID: DailyLitSucceed
  Tom Peters's 100 Ways to Success/Make Money
  60 readers (followers)

Twitter users will be able to follow the selected title each day with Twitter updates providing a link to that day's installment. This release further shows DailyLit's devotion to making book reading more manageable in our everyday busy lives.

White-Label Social Networks Discussed @ GSP

I just moderated a panel discussion titled From Zero to Community in 60 Seconds: White-Label Social Networks at the O'Reilly GSP East Conference. The session took an inside look at the business behind white-label social networks and included the following speakers:

Alex Blum, CEO of Kickapps

Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane (part of AOL)

Kerry Parkins, VP of Products at Mixx.com

Sean Roach, CEO of GotAccess.com

It was a great discussion as we kicked off the discussion by explaining how each of their products or services might be able to help create a social network all about the best baseball team in all the land, the Chicago Cubs. Great job panelist, as we could have gone on another hour or so.

Plurk: Twitter With Vertical Timeline & Karma

Last week, I looked at Plurk, a new lifestreaming startup based in Toronto, Canada. Aside from its creative name, Plurk leverages concepts from Twitter to offer an unique timeline based lifestreaming product worth taking a look at.

Plurk takes on status messaging with a little more structure than Twitter by offering up a set of verbs to construct a status message. It also enables users to share videos and photos from a host of popular video and image hosting sites from YouTube to Flickr. Plurk status messages can also include emoticons for some added flair.

Google Logo Update, Firefox 3.0 Preview, iPhone 2 Cheaper, Verizon Buys Alltel & Wireless Social Networking Report

Photo of the Week: This photo caught my eye as Chris Brogan captured this shot and called it Frog Prince.