SOMEWHAT FRANK

Talking Start-ups, Bootstrapping & Lifestreaming

It was a pleasure as always to get a chance to sync up with Greg "The Trend Junkie" Cangialosi the CEO of Baltimore-based Blue Sky Factory in San Francisco today. I had him swing by to do his Thursday afternoon live show BlueSkyFactory.tv from the Bebo office.

We discussed a number of topics including start-ups, shiny objects of the Web, bootstrapping, entrepreneurship, building community anywhere, TECH cocktail, SOMEWHAT FRANK and my recent work at AOL as part of the People Network group which includes AIM, Bebo, ICQ and Socialthing and life-streaming products. We are also were joined by Jean-Paul Cozzatti the Development / Product Engineering Lead at Bebo to talk about the updates for Bebo that went live this past December and February as well as a hint as to what is to come in the coming months.

Tune into the video above to watch episode #7 of Blue Sky Factory TV (above).

Aggregated Weblogs For the Topics You Love.com

What do you love? I love breakfast. I love beaches. I love guitar. I love the Chicago Cubs and I am a fan of Dave Matthews. Love.com launched recently, somewhat under the radar, as a lightly branded AOL product, to help connect you with the topics you love. Love.com is not a dating site but a search engine with aggregated result pages looking to get you a snap-shot about any given topic.

Grant Cerny, VP, MediaGlow Entertainment Products with AOL's MediaGlow, had this to say about Love.com:

"Love.com topic blogs celebrate the diverse passions of all people with hundreds of thousands of profiled blogs and the capability to create new blog topics on the fly.  It organizes topics based on topical heat or velocity so that love.com can provide a central view into what the world is loving now."

Looking to create the perfect page for whatever you love, Love.com aggregates items from a few different sources. In performing a search for Chicago Cubs and love.com pulled in basic news stories, YouTube videos, images, relates websites, Twitter messages and related items for sale. The news stories are pulled real-time via Relegence, a company that AOL acquired in November 2006. Love.com is built on top of the blogging platform Blogsmith, the same platform that powers a number of popular weblogs, with the ability to spin off infinite sub-domains based on the popularity of a topic. Since MediaGlow has a number of popular content properties, Love.com can help recirculate their content through these infinite topical blog pages via search engines.

Love.com also offered recommendations for related topics things I might like which included baseball, Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees. This makes sense since the Chicago Cubs are a baseball team. I assume it pulled in the Cincinnati Reds because the Cubs are currently playing the Reds and there are news stories that relate them. I am not sure why New York Yankees was also offered as a recommendation other than that they are another the baseball team.

IsraelWebTour 2009: This Week in Silicon Valley

It's true, SOMEWHAT FRANK was once named a "must know" blog for any Israeli startup as I have covered a number of them in the past. Every year a dozen or so, of these startups tour Silicon Valley as part of the IsraelWebTour, an event organized by the California Israel Chamber of Commerce.

Last year, I was able to attend the demo day and I was impressed with a number of the Israeli companies and shared this video. It's that time of the year again and I wanted to highlight the 10 Israeli Web startups participating in the 2009 tour (listed in alphabetical order) below:

Conduit
Conduit provides website syndication solutions for web publishers by creating a direct, always-on connection between publishers and subscribers. More than 180,000 publishers have joined the Conduit network worldwide, including Fox News, Lufthansa, Major League Baseball, Greenpeace, TechCrunch, Softonic and organizations in 180 countries around the globe.

ContextIn
ContextIn's proven proprietary multi-lingual semantic algorithms significantly increase relevancy and targeting to deliver the most valuable, targeted advertising inventory and traffic quality. Our algorithms have been proven to maximize both relevancy and monetization for Ad Networks, Advertisers and Publishers alike for increased ROI.

EyeView Digital,
EyeView is transforming online conversion through the use of rich-media content combining compelling rich-media content with a world-first rich-media conversion platform. The result is a proven and significant increase your website’s conversion rates. EyeView’s solution is ideal for a wide variety of websites and online industries such as: Gaming, Online Forex, Travel, Credit Cards, community, Software and eCommerce

Footbo
Footbo is the place for football/soccer lovers world-wide. Headquartered in London, UK, Footbo is the leading international social media platform with an exclusive focus on soccer. It combines the concept of social networking with the world of soccer to provide fans with a one-stop platform for all their soccer needs.

SemantiNet
Semantinet is pioneering the development of “Top Down” Semantic Web technologies. SemantiNet’s Headup Semantic Web plugin, currently available as an addon for Mozilla's Firefox browser, presents you with textual and rich media content related to the objects and terms it identifies on the pages you browse. Headup not only identifies these objects but has a basic understanding of the relationships between them.

SundaySky
SundaySky enables publishers to quickly, easily and cost-effectively infuse their website with video clips. SundaySky’s DynamicVideo™ Platform allows mass generation of always up-to-date video content, while leveraging existing content repositories. Videos are personalized for each user, interactive, and are intricately linked the site the user is viewing, even if that site is totally dynamic.

Superfish
Superfish has developed a unique, first of it’s kind, 3D object recognition engine to bring high-accuracy visual matching, browsing, and comparison into the world of search engines. The company’s unique IP puts together machine vision, machine learning and advanced search algorithms to allow for users to intuitively find similar objects visually.

SweetIM
SweetIM is focused on delivering fun content and self-expression tools. SweetIM products are intended to allow users to upgrade their social engagement, by offering fun content and an add-on for IM, webmail, and social networks that is easy to use. Through these tools users are sending daily over 6M flash animations, games and video to each other.

Triond
Triond offers a new approach for user generated content. Triond publishes, distributes and monetizes users' content over a network of niche websites. This way users get to focus on the content creating process, while leveraging the service in order to get more readership, recognition and revenue than they would if they were to publish individually.

WorkLight
WorkLight enables businesses to reach customers, employees and partners securely in the places they frequent. The flagship product, WorkLight Application Platform, securely syndicates enterprise applications in a multitude of consumer online channels, such as widgets, social networks, personalized homepages, iPhone applications, blogs and RSS feeds.

This year I will not be in attendance but it looks like another great set of startups. Good luck, safe travels and enjoy the tour!

Visiting Intel Portland Today

Today as part of the Intel Insider program, a social media brand ambassador program, I am visiting Intel's Portland, Oregon microchip manufacturing facilities. I am excited to be in Portland for the first time and look forward to learning how they make chips. I will most likely be streaming some videos today and tomorrow via Qik and UStream.TV on my iPhone so be sure to check back (videos streams shown below). I will be using Brightkite, Flickr, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter to keep you updated on how things are going.

SOMEWHAT FRANK on Qik:

Headed to find Intel HQ in Portland

Outside Intel FAB 20 with Intel Insiders

Clear WiMax Ride in Portland

Segway With WiMax

Intel Health Gadget

Intel My Wifi Demo Lab

Hopefully my iPhone will have enough juice to keep the content flowing all day long. Our day concludes at the Social Media Club Portland Tweetup event tonight with the rest of my Intel Insider pals, so if you are in the area come by and say hello!!!

Netbook vs. Notebook Faceoff

I recently got a chance demo a couple of very unique but different Dell PC's with Intel processors inside as I looked at the Dell Studio 15 notebook and the Dell mini 9 netbook. The Dell Studio is a heavy duty home studio laptop with a Blu-ray drive and is powered by the Intel Centrino 2 processor. The Dell mini is a shiny little netbook that sports the Intel Atom processor (Intel's smallest chip) inside. I carried the Dell mini on the road while in Austin, Texas at SXSW Interactive and loved its light weight size and capablities while on the go. Check our episode 75 on SOMEWHAT FRANK and I hightlight the two computers as they go head to head. Which would you chose if you had to pick between the two?

Glue Connects You With Friends On Sites Visited

Conversations are being sparked in a number of places on the Web these days from Twitter to Facebook to blogs. AdaptiveBlue's product called Glue takes a different approach by enabling conversations and sharing on sites that you visit via the browser. Glue is an browser plugin that appears on your current page to show you friends who looked at the same things and what they thought. It brings your social network to the content pages that you visit rather than integrating directly into various web sites.

Glue 4.2 Overview from AdaptiveBlue on Vimeo.

Check out the quick video (above) and GetGlue to try it out if you haven't already as it just launched a new release. The new release contains the following (as described by Glue):

1. Connected Conversations: Glue enables web wide contextual conversations around books, movies, music and other everyday things. Now users can discuss the things they like with their friends regardless of which sites they all visit.
2. Smart Recommendations: Glue automatically aggregates friends activity from across the web so that users can instantly see what books, music, and movies their friends like the most. Simply by using Glue, users implicitly recommend things to their friends and benefit from friends recommendations.
3. Web Wide Top Lists: Glue features web wide top lists of popular books, music, movies and other everyday things. These lists are calculated based on the aggregate weekly activity of all Glue users. The lists reveal what things users are paying attention to as they browse the web.

Also you can connect and spread the Glue love a number of different ways on the Web.

SocialVibe: Get Sponsors For Your Cause

SocialVibe allows you to "Get Sponsored" by your favorite brands on your social profiles while earning points for the reward of your choice. Though based in Los Angeles but I got a chance to talk with Sarah Townsend from SocialVibe for a quick impromptu interview at South By Southwest Interactive. Check out episode 74 of SOMEWHAT FRANK as we talk about SocialVibe and how it can be used for social good.

New Book Queue: Is Stacking Up!

I get a lot of books to preview and with all my travels the last few months they have been stacking up. I really need to get a Kindle so I can read more while on the road (if you can help with getting a Kindle please let me know). In the meantime, my new book queue has been stacking up! I currently have six new books in my queue. I am running a contest for free copies of one of the books. Check out the six books in my new book queue and let me know your feedback on any of them. 

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by Brian Solis & Deirdre Breakenridge - Public Relations as we know it is quickly changing this book takes a look at the changing landscape where your customers are now your biggest advocates, as we all have a voice as the public in public relations. Check out my perspective on the new book.

The Wallstrip Edge by Howard Lindzon - This book shows readers how to profit from his straightforward investment philosophy -- a unique trend watching philosophy that mades Wallstrip.com such a hit, including how to look at trends from a different perspective, knowing when to buy a certain stock, how to hold it, and of course when to sell. I can send 5 free copies of the book to anyone in the Canada and US (sorry no P.O. Boxes). If you would like to try for copy of the book, send me an @FrankGruber reply on Twitter why you deserve a copy of the book. I will select my 5 favorites on Friday, April 10, 2009 and have a copy sent to you.

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin - Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

Me 2.0 Building A Powerful Brand To Achieve Career Success by Dan Schawbel - Offering practical advice about personal branding. This book bridges the gap between the current business climate and the progressive best practices of the future. Covering a variety of topics all crafted to improve one’s success in the job market. I even have a quote in this book along with some other industry thought leaders.

Assemble the Social Web with Zembly by Gail Anderson - Whether you’re a long-time web professional or a casual developer with a specialized problem to solve, zembly might be a tool you’ve been waiting for. Zembly is like the "Wikipedia for the social Web." I got to know zembly this past summer as I talked to them at the Graphing Social Patterns East conference in DC - check out the video.

YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts by Alan Lastufka & Michael W. Dean - Join Alan, who makes part of his living from YouTube, and Michael, a successful filmmaker, author, and D.I.Y. art pioneer. They'll take you from the basics of gear to making it big on YouTube, with a focus on networking and interaction. If you are producing videos online you should definitely check this book out.

If you have a book that you would like me to check out please send me an @FrankGruber reply on Twitter or send me an email.