SOMEWHAT FRANK

Wattzon: A Personalized Energy Tracker

"It's gettin' hot in herre, so take off all your clothes." from the popular Nelly song, Hot In Herre

Rather than shed all your clothes you might want to first determine why it is getting so hot in here - on the planet Earth. Climate change is definitely something that has take center stage as the Earth is heating up. But we all can help to lessen our individual impact on climate change. Something as simple as unplugging your coffeemaker or toaster after use can help to save energy and reduce your negative impact on climate change. I find it is difficult to measure the various things I am doing to impact climate change. WattzOn recently launched to create tools to help us all determine our energy consumption.

How Bad Is Your Twitter Addiction?

Twitter, like anything, can be a little addictive as we look to reach out and communicate with all our friends and followers. Xefer has pulled together an interesting mashup which leverages Yahoo Pipes and Google Chart API to plot the usage of twitter of a specific user. So of course, I had to plug the somewhatfrank twitter id in and chart it.

Give it a try here for your twitter username.

Kirix Strata: Web Browse Your Data

At the heart of just about every web application is a database. Getting at and manipulating that data is often done through SQL statements which involve a level of database understanding. Kirix, a Chicago-based startup, is looking to help change that by exposing your data in a Web browser experience with the launch tomorrow of Strata. Strata is a powerful set of tools that enables anyone to access, browse and manipulate data from a Web browser.

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.

Blogging To Death, Facebook Chat Looms, Twitter Tools, Standford VC Funding, Fun Mobile Video & Photo Apps & Social API Clash

Photo of the Week: Spring is here and baseball is back as I snapped this photo of the Wrigley Field "W" flag while in Chicago this past weekend. Baseball is a lot like blogging (as I explained awhile back).

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 4.6.2008

AOL Redesigns Seem To Be Paying Off

The latter part of last year, AOL redesigned a number of its channel offerings including News, Sports and Money & Finance in an effort to increase engagement and traffic starting with AOL News in June 2007. According to a recent release by AOL, it appears that these changes are paying off. The redesign offers a cleaner design and more blog-like social platform than before which might have contributed to increases in key metrics like Page Views and Unique Visitors.

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.

Video: Tantek Çelik On Open Web Media

Tantek Çelik, an innovation leader and long time advocate of open standards efforts like microformats, recently discussed open Web standards and data portability at an Open Media Web Meetup. Tantek  believes writing on the Web is like "writing in sand" since it all could be wiped out irretrievable when the next wave of technology standards come through. Tantek also speaks about data formats and how content data formats expires content over time. Tune in to Tantek's forward thinking perspective and analysis.

Cumul.us: Predict The Weather & What To Wear

Everyday just about everyone asks the same few questions as they prepare for another day. What is the weather like outside? And, what should I wear? Now thanks to crowd-sourcing and the power of the Web you can get some help with these questions. Cumul.us is a web site that aggregates the opinions of the masses to display weather predictions and what people are going to wear as a  result. Brilliant!

Poll: Thoughts about Google's OpenSocial API?

This week the Web development community has been buzzing as details were released about a new widget API called Google OpenSocial. Google officially launched OpenSocial and provided this video to further explain its actions. I have been trying to get my head around what it really means and would like to open it up to my readers for input via a Somewhat Frank poll to get your take on OpenSocial.

spigit Simulates To Help Innovation

Spigit launched into beta in mid-July to offer up a startup simulation game to help entrepreneurs showcase new ideas and innovations and in the process connect with a network of professionals. Spigit seems to have blended a multiply player online simulation game with a social network while aimed at creating a new company. Spigit can act as a testing ground for new ideas by helping to predict if they will succeed or fail with less invested.

Spigit is said to have developed a technology that measures and quantifies interactions on group platforms to extract wisdom from crowds. The spigit simulation game which is made up of three phases (incubation, innovation and emergence) narrows the field of ideas and winners are added to a virtual stock market and traded like real companies. By creating a reputation profile for every user, the spigit community is able to create an environment filled with metrics to help find good ideas and good users. Spigit already has 30+ startups leveraging the consumer facing platform and plans to offer an enterprise edition for companies looking to uncover employees with good ideas.

StreetAdvisor A Street Level Local Guide

StreetAdvisor, an Australia-based startup, publicly launch a few months ago to provide an online real estate community powered by crowd-sourced reviews, photos, and videos. Brothers Adam and Jason Spencer wanted to create a site that provided a good amount of information of what it is like to live on any particular street in the world. With a fresh Ajax interface that leverages an almost wiki-like approach StreetAdvisor makes it easy to contribute content about any street.

In searching for a specific street users can find out a street score and rating for a specific location for the mapped location. Users can join a street and receive email updates as additional information, ratings and reviews become available or just snag the provided RSS feed. Users can learn and contribute details about where they live including noise levels, traffic, neighbors, entertainment, public services and more.

Today StreetAdvisor launched some additional features which should further help the site become an a valuable resource for community information reported from the people on the streets.

First off, StreetAdvisor's Local Experts Program offers incentives for users that contribute solid content StreetAdvisors. Real estate agents and other service providers might be able to leverage the program to further bolster their reputation as solid local resources. Users can gain "Street Cred" the currency of the site which could turn into prizes.

Secondly, based on feedback from its users StreetAdvisor has expanded its platform to take on not only street reviews but also  content for cities, states, and countries. Thirdly, StreetAdvisor now also features upgraded guidebooks that now include four broader categories. Guidebooks also feature full version history, similar to Wiki's, thus enabling the ability to see changes and revert to any previous entries.

Finally, StreetAdvisor now offers the ability to secure exclusive "run-of-street" advertising opportunities on a per city basis which I think of as "Virtual Billboards." Targeting real estate agents and mortgage brokers, local service providers, city/local bloggers and media looking to generate leads in a specific city, StreetAdvisor Billboards could prove to be a great way to reach a local audience.

Bottom-line: StreetAdvisor leverages a wiki-like contributor interface to intake street level community information that could prove to be an valuable resource to real estate companies and web sites that look to offer their visitors community related information.

 

FixYa A Free Gadget & Consumer Electronic Product Support Community

Do you have questions about your latest gadget purchase? If so you can always take a look the instruction manual that came with that particular product. However, you still might have questions which is where FixYa comes in. FixYa offers free tech support and technical help for gadgets, electronic equipment and consumer products. 

FixYa aggregates support information from its community of users who share their experiences of technical problems and solutions. FixYa offers a rating system for support content which allows its users to find the best solution for every problem and even solve new problems. FixYa's knowledgebase is based on real users' experience rather than on information by the manufacturer.

FixYa could come in handy for iPhone related questions. For example, find out  the best way to send an SMS message to multiple recipients via the iPhone. Or better yet, I'd love to figure out how to get my enterprise email flowing into my iPhone.

Interestingly, community members can also earn money for answering other users technical questions. If a user solves a premium problem they can get up to $5.00 for the solution. Additionally, users can provide live chat assistance and receive up to $15.00 for a solution.

Bottom-line: FixYa provides free community supported tech support and technical help for gadgets and consumer electronic equipment and products. 

APML Workgroup Looks To Standardize Attention Specification

Attention data is the information users give to web sites based on their interests and interactions and is a key personalization component. It is a valuable resource that reflects user interests, activities and values, and it serves as a proxy for their attention. APML or Attention Profiling Markup Language was created by Touchstone Live an attention-based company and was highlighted previously on Somewhat Frank. According to the APML website:

"APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers. The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data€“ including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests."

The APML Workgroup was recently formed which includes:

• Sam Sethi (Vecosys)
• Daniel Winterstein (ThinkTank Maths)
• Steve Williams (Programmer, Digg)
• David Cancel (Co-Founder, Compete.com)
• Richard Giles/Graeme Sutherland (Co-Founders, Scouta.com)
• Elias Bizannes
• Chris Saad/Ashley Angell (Co-Founders, Faraday Media/ Touchstone)
• Paul Jones (Senior Architect, Faraday Media/ Touchstone)
• Mitch Ratcliffe (Co-Founder, Buzzlogic)
• Chris Messina (Citizen Agency)
• Daniela Barbosa (Solutions Architect, Dow Jones)
• Phil Morle (VP Attention, Yoick)
• Ben Metcalfe (Orange/France Telecom)

The APML Workgroup is tasked with converting the current specification into an agreed standard and the group has already created a revised spec. The adoption of APML as a standard would empower users to take control of managing there attention data. APML could help create a more unified personalized experience as users jump from site to site. More information can be found on the APML website: www.apml.org. If you are interested in helping sculpt the attention economy standard be sure to contact the group.

The Feed Market View From FeedBurner

FeedBurner released a feed market analysis report yesterday (February 22, 2007) which offers an unprecedented look into the syndication industry. This is the most comprehensive feed report of its kind to date. According to the report, Google, MyYahoo and Bloglines currently offer the most popular web-based feed aggregator products. It appears Google has the most feed reading users. A number of publications have already dissected the report but here are the highlights:

• MyYahoo reports the most click-throughs via feeds which makes sense since it only offers links
• Google (combo of Google Reader & Google Personalized Homepage) reports the highest number of read items
• Google also pulls in the most FeedBurner feeds

I found the web-based aggregator reporting information to be the most interesting as it shows the differentiation between reporting methods of top web-based feed aggregators (see diagram below). It brings to light the fact that not all products are reporting metrics in the same fashion which could affect the metrics FeedBurner is able to report. For example, Google reports item views on visible items while Bloglines reports all items on a page when it loads. If both Google and Bloglines load the Somewhat Frank feed, Google will report views only on items that are visible to a user via the scroll bar while Bloglines will report views on a page when it is loaded. Scrolling down to make two items visible in the Google Reader two views will be reported to FeedBurner while making two items visible in Bloglines will report still on all items on the page when it was loaded as viewed. In the same respect, there also could still be products that are missing from FeedBurners metrics as Google did not report subscriber information until just last week and there could be other companies still excluded.

For additional perspectives on FeedBurner's latest report check out articles on Olson's Observations, TechCrunch and /Message.