SOMEWHAT FRANK

Video: Fantasy Football Aggregator

With the NFL football season just getting underway there are lots of fantasy football junkies placing their bets that they have the best team on the Web this year. Keeping track of a fantasy football team can be difficult sometimes due to the distributed nature of the information and tools related to managing your players and teams. Ultimate Football Network, a fantasy football social aggregator product, just launched this week and I got a chance to chat with founder Jonathan Joseph at TechCrunch50 conference.

Check out video episode 45 on SOMEWHAT FRANK (below) as we talk fantasy football.

Yep, It's True, AOL To Acquire SocialThing

A few weeks ago Mike Arrington gave me a call asking me if, my employer, AOL, had acquired SocialThing. Though it struck very close to home, I had to bite my tongue since the deal had not yet closed and did not comment on the matter. Now that is has been officially released, I can. It is true, AOL has entered into an agreement to acquire SocialThing, the Boulder, Colorado based social aggregating lifestream startup. The terms are not disclosed and the acquisition is still subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions.

I met founders Matt "indiekid" Galligan, Ben Brightwell and the team as they demo'ed at TECH cocktail Boulder on March 6th. Matt is originally from Illinois, like I am, and moved to Boulder to create SocialThing as part of the TechStars incubator program. I got a preview of the SocialThing private beta at TECH cocktail (shown in the video below) which was a few days before they launched at SXSW Interactive and were written up favorably on TechCrunch as being easier to use than FriendFeed. I was impressed by what this startup had created as it offered a wrapper for all your social activities making it easy to post to multiple networks at once. SocialThing is integrated with 13 social media properties including Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Flickr and is currently still in private beta.

AIM BuddyUpdates Web-based Lifestream

For the last month or so I have been working on a little project at AOL as part of the AIM group called the BuddyUpdates. BuddyUpdates, offers a way for AIM users to share their actions with the rest of their buddy list. This product has been available since 2005 within the AIM client. Note this was well before the Facebook news feed was unveiled and Twitter or number of other lifestreaming services existed. The web-based BuddyUpdates interface launched publicly on July 9th and we have been sharing it with a small group as we continue to update it.

So if you use AIM you can pull in all you favorite services like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Viddler, Digg, Mixx, StumbleUpon and so on and share them with the rest of the folks that have you on your buddy list. If you are on the AIM client you will see a little orange icon next to a buddy screen name that has BuddyUpdates. Upon clicking the orange icon you can view their updates. BuddyUpdates offers a Web interface for setting up and viewing these updates.

Swurl Your Life Together Online

Swurl, a San Diego-based startup, offers a very smart aggregation of all your favorite services that makeup your social footprint online. Swurl is a place to bring all the things you do online together to share in a blog-like format.

The 'my' Trend, How To Freeload at Web 2.0 Expo, Google Genetic Index Coming, AOL Top Ad Network By Reach & Is Content A Commodity?

Photo of the Week: This past weekend brought out some warmer spring weather which brought out the joggers like this photo captured on film in Chicago by my friend Araceli Arroyo.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 4.20.2008

Lifestream.fm Social Aggregator Examined

Lifestream.fm recently launched into beta, so far I have to say, this is the best “life streaming” service I have found. However, it has tough competition with FriendFeed, SocialThing, and others. Lifestream.fm offers users the ability to aggregate numerous services such as Del.icio.us, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Pownce, Tumblr, and many others. It also allows you to aggregate numerous RSS feeds.

OpenSocial Foundation Formed, Tips On Making Great Mobile Apps, Twitter Monetization Issue, Value of Widgets & Are Newspapers Dead?

Photo of the Week: With spring upon us, the cherry blossoms are in bloom around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. this week.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 3.30.2008

Alltops Pre-configured Topical RSS Pages

Alltop, a new startup creation founded by Guy Kawasaki, just announced a simple landing page product for those looking for the top feeds for a number of different vertical categories. Taking inspiration from popurls which aggregates the top urls on the Web, Alltop offers pages filled with feeds on a various topics.

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.

EveryBlock: A Hyper-Local News Aggegator

Map mashups have become almost a dime a dozen these days as the release of open APIs by just about every major online mapping site and and development tools has lowered the barriers of entry. That was not always the case though and as recently as 2005 trailblazing mashup like HousingMaps.com (a cross between Google Maps and Craigslist housing listings) and ChicagoCrime.org (used Google Maps and Chicago Crime data to display crimes on a map) developers actually had to reverse engineer JavaScript code to create  mashup. This all changed with the release of Google Maps API and most of the major mapping sites on the Web have since followed suit.

It was recently announced that due to some server issues and overlaps with another new mashup the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism award winning early mashup ChicagoCrime.org will be redirect to - EveryBlock. EveryBlock, launched recently, is also mashup of sorts created by Chicago-based Adrian Holovaty the developer that produced ChicagoCrime.org. EveryBlock is a news aggregator site for Chicago, New York and San Francisco that looks to help you answer the question:

“What’s happening in my neighborhood?”

The site compiles all the openly available public records and then slices and dices them so that they are easily accessible by zip code, address or neighborhood.

Help Finding A Nintendo Wii

Are you looking for a Nintendo Wii? I know some of my friends are. One of my friends is even thinking about getting in line at 5 o'clock in the morning at the Nintendo retail store in New York to try and snag one. The store only allows you to buy one Wii at a time if you are one of the lucky souls that gets one at all. However, there may be a few other options on the Web that might be less time consuming and physically challenging to get your hands on a  Nintendo Wii.

Wink People Search Opens Profiles

Finding people on the Web can sometimes be difficult. Many people turn to Google to search for people but unless someone is very active online it can be tough to find people. In addition, there are so many social networks that do not index well on Google. Wink, a Los Altos, California based startup, tries to make it easy to find people online. 

HelloTxt For Simultaneous Microblogging

Microblogging platforms are more plentiful than ever with sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku among others. However there are so many blogging platforms it is inconvenient to post to them all. So in steps hellotxt to lend a helping hand. Hellotxt enables users to aggregate microblogging services and insert messages on all main microblogging services simultaneously.

Valley Earthquake Shakes Out Twitter's Value

If you don't understand the value of Twitter you might want to listen now. I was just on Twitter checking some friend updates when I saw one of my Twitter friends yelled, "EARTHQUAKE!" The earthquake hit just outside of San Jose but thanks to Twitter I had personalized alerts from several friends in the area as soon as the quake hit.

Soup.io Launches Hot New Microblog Platform

Microblogging platforms have been coming into their own as sites like Tumblr and Twitter have emerged to enable users to provide a shorter format for blog posts. Why microblogs? Microblog platforms offer users an easy way to make shorter format posts that take less time and overhead than a full fledge blog. Soup.io has just officially launched to offer users a microblogging platform that pay attention to your content details so different content types are displayed appropriately.