SOMEWHAT FRANK

Google Phone Details, Dapper Facebook App Maker, Clown Co. Named Hulu, Personalized & Social Search and The Sexual Relationship Database

Photo of the Week: I found this unique view of the Washington Monument in Washington, DC this weekend.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 09.02.2007

TECH cocktail In Beantown Sign-up Now

Last week I mentioned that TECH cocktail, an event I co-founded with Eric Olson, was coming soon to Boston and now I am pleased to announce that you can now sign-up for TECH cocktail Boston.

Facebook Source Code Leak, Porn 2.0, Spock Launches, Personalize Jib Jab, Change of myAOL Heart & Startup Tips

Photo of the Week: A couple of Maine Lobstahs! from a surf & turf event I attended on Friday. It doesn't get a whole lot more "summer" than this.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 08.12.2007

TECH cocktail Celebrates One

Last night I was in Chicago with Eric Olson co-hosting TECH cocktail Chicago 5 for an estimated six hundred guests at John Barleycorn near Wrigley Field. Eric and I co-founded TECH cocktail just a year ago looking to help foster a tighter and more amplified technology signal and community in Chicago. We have since looked to other underserved tech scenes to do the same. We are planning on having a second TECH cocktail in DC soon and then our first TECH cocktail in Boston.

TECH cocktail Chicago 5 was filled with green energy as guests were amped to celebrate the one year anniversary of TECH cocktail. In addition, guests who wore green clothing were given a chance to win some spectacular prizes from SingleHop, a sponsor that has been backing TECH cocktail since day one.

The three plus hour free event was sponsored by SingleHop, LinkedIn, Digital Bootcamp, Saper Law Office, Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, MK Capital, Origin Ventures, Chicago Micro, Fave Media and LiquidTalk.

Demos were performed by myAOL (a product I manage at AOL),  PollEverywhere, My Open Bar, Braintree Financial, Humanized and Fave Media. More to come on some of these soon as I take a closer look.

We are pleased with the aggressive progress in Chicago and look forward to future events in the Windy City. Thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters, we could not have done it without you. Cheers!

Check out the TECH cocktail Chicago 5 photos displayed in the slideshow below.

Somewhat Frank Turns 2; TECH cocktail Turning 1

Birthday logo thanks to Orli Yakuel.

Somewhat Frank is embarking on the terrible two's - that's right, today is Somewhat Frank's blog birthday! I have to say the last two years have flown by with thousands of article and comments being generated on Somewhat Frank. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to the feed and read or interacted with the site. Also, thank you to the special contributors and supporters. It is not easy to work full-time and keep the fresh content flowing everyday - but I my readers keep me motivated and I thank you for it. I hope to continue to bring a somewhat frank perspective in the coming years.

In addition to a blog birthday, TECH cocktail, a social mixer that I co-founded with Eric Olson, will be celebrating it's one year anniversary on July 12, 2007 at TECH cocktail 5 in Chicago. We started with just dream of uniting and amplifying the local tech scene in undeserved areas and feel we have so far exceeded expectations. We really have had a lot of fun doing it too. We have held 4 Chicago large events and 1 in DC, and we have plans to do more...look for one in Boston coming soon.

RSVP HERE for TECH cocktail 5 in Chicago today. If you are interested in sponsoring or demoing at the event please email me at: frank [at] techcocktail dot com. We hope to see you there.

Google Buys FeedBurner -- It's Official!

Congrats to Chicago-based feed management and advertising company FeedBurner for getting acquired by Google. The rumor that started  a few weeks ago has been confirmed by FeedBurner today (June 1, 2007). There are more details on Google/FeedBurner deal here. In addition, they are just a great group of people.

Being from Chicago, and I have the opportunity to get to know FeedBurner and just about all of their 30+ employees through either work or play in the last few years. FeedBurner was a big supporter of TECH cocktail, as Eric Olson works at FeedBurner and co-founded the event with me in 2006. They have been an innovator in both the feed management/metrics and advertising space.

Congrats to all parties involved. Keep those feeds burning - oh and please let me know if the Somewhat Frank feed traffic melts any of Google's servers! :)

Facebook Opens Up, Google Buys FeedBurner, CBS Buys WallStrip, The Blog Search Engine King & What is Web 3.0?

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by James Yu at Pier 38 in San Francisco on Thursday night (May 24, 2007) as part of the NewTeeVee and MetaCafe Pier Screenings.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 05.27.07

Facebook Moving to An Open Platform Strategy
Facebook has announced a new strategy to let other companies provide their services on special pages within its site, moving beyond its basic social networking service. Facebook is taking the total opposite approach than its competitor MySpace by making itself an open platform. Will this give personalized homepages a run for the money?

Bebo, Wall Strip, Feedburner - who is getting bought out?
Early in the week Om Malik was wondering which of the three rumored deals - CBS-WallStrip, Bebo-Yahoo or Google-FeedBurner - will come true? By weeks end two out of the three (CBS-WallStrip & Google-FeedBurner) are said to be done deals.

What is Web 3.0?
Dave Winer weighs in on what he believes is web 3.0.

Google Reader vs. NewsGator Online vs. Bloglines
Judi Sohn takes a look at the most popular applications for keeping up with all those RSS feeds in a browser window: Bloglines, NewsGator Online and Google Reader.

RSS in Firefox: A Complete Guide
If reading RSS feeds in Firefox is your thing, check out some of your options in this article.

The Rise of the Nontrepreneur
A new breed of visionaries who are not In It for the money. They want to change the world. This line of thinking reminds me of a little tech mixer event I started with Eric Olson called TECH cocktail - I guess you could say we are nontrepreneurs.

TV Guide Online Video Search
TV Guide now offers an online video guide that distinguishes itself from other online video search by focusing on professionally produced video content such as, movie trailers, TV shows, news clips, previews and programs across all genres and networks.

Every good domain is taken. Here's why.
Have you tried to lock a domain recently? It is not as easy as it might seem. Kevin Ham built a $300 million web company in Vancouver you've probably never heard of collecting domains and selling them for top dollar.

Blog Search is Dead and Google Killed It
A few years ago blog search was an important aspect to every bloggers routine and I always wondered where blog search would go and when Google would come in and become king. Steve Rubel thinks that day has come.

Pageflakes Announces 100,000 Pagecasts
Personalized start page service Pageflakes announced that their "Pagecasts" feature, which allows users to share their Pageflakes pages with the public or a specific group of users, has been used to push out 100,000 Pagecasts.

Google Coop Embeds Gadgets in Search Results
Google Coop has quietly expanded and now can embed data from gadgets (i.e. widgets) as subscribed links.

Movie Review & Start-up Commentary: e-dreams
Eric Olson highlights some movies that document the startup life.

TECH cocktail Takes On Washington

A few hours ago, TECH cocktail completed its first event in DC at the popular MCCXXIII bar (1223 Club DC, for the non Roman-numeral types).  The event was packed with hundreds of guests mingling as the place rocked to music, wine, product demos and mingling.  Over 225+ technology enthusiasts, VCs, bloggers and entrepreneurs came and celebrated the evening together. Wine Library TV, AOL, AN Hosting, BuzzXYZ, and Blue Sky Factory helped to sponsor the event - thank you all for your helping getting TECH cocktail going in DC.

It has been over a year since Eric Olson and I secured the TECH cocktail domain name and started firing up for these events. We were pleased to see such a great response in a new city as last night’s event was no different than the Chicago events that have become extremely big in the windy city.  Thank you to local blogger Nick O’Neill who helped plan the event - we couldn't have done it without you.

The event was well attended with a great mix of guests from a number of the local startups. It was great to see Gabe Rivera, techmeme creator, was in town from Silicon Valley and even dropped in. Demos were performed by the following companies:

BuzzXYZ powered by Blogdigger - helps track the buzz online
Clearspring - services for building, deploying and tracking widgets
Sportsvite - online community is bringing sports lovers together for on-the-field fun
PatentMonkey.com - fully search-able US patent text database
Wine Library TV - will be doing wine tasting and showcasing the wine video site

Though I am somewhat biased, TECH cocktail DC 1 went very well and was worth missing the finale of the Office to be there. I look forward to the next TECH Cocktail in DC and wherever else we choose to take it next.

Check out the photos tagged: techcocktaildc1. Special thank you to Raoul Pop for taking this awesome photo set at TcDC1 - this guy can take some pictures!

BusinessPOV Video Blog Covers Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Creative Culture (and TECH cocktail)

Founded in September of 2006, BusinessPOV is a Chicago-based weekday video blog focused on profiling companies, people and products that display elements of innovation, entrepreneurship and creative culture. Following a short video format the site is organized to offer top stories and local knowledge. Both video types provide valuable insight for anyone looking to or currently running a business. BusinessPOV is produced by Mark Scheffler, a former staff reporter at Crain's Chicago Business and award-winning contributor to the Chicago Tribune Magazine and his brother,  Peter, is the co-founder of XFA, one of the largest independent brokerages at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

BusinessPOV recently attended TECH cocktail 4, an event I co-founded with Eric Olson, to highlight the event. Currently, the following videos are posted:

The Forces Behind Tech Cocktail
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 1: TimeXchange.net
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 2: Menuism
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 3: Text2Store
TechCocktail 4 Product Demos, Part 4: Zaplee.com
More to come…or subscribe to BusinessPOV updates.

If you want to attend a TECH cocktail in real life, be sure to RSVP for TECH cocktail DC 1 - coming soon to Washington, DC.

TECH cocktail Is Coming To DC

I am happy to announce that TECH cocktail is coming to DC in May! Coming off a great event in Chicago a couple of weeks ago we are excited to be co-hosting TECH cocktail DC 1 (TcDC1) on May 17, 2007 from 6 to 9:30pm at MCCXXII, a sweet venue in DC. Demo and sponsor details will be coming soon...as we still have a few demo & sponsor slots open, so if you are interested please contact me ASAP. 

The event is open and FREE to bloggers, technology enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and other business professionals interested in the technology arena in under served technology communities. Our goal is to help to amplify the technology and entrepreneurial signal in under served markets and have fun doing it.

Co-founders Eric Olson and I will be co-hosting TcDC1 with Nick O'Neill, a DC blogger, web developer and area native. Also special thanks to colleagues Jim Simmons & Omar Miskinyar for helping to coordinate securing the venue - that was huge!

If you are interested in attending please sign up now since you have to be on the guest list to be admitted to the event: http://techcocktaildc1.eventbrite.com
I hope to see you there! 

Google Acquires DoubleClick, 10 Hot Startups, Social Aggregators, FoundRead Born & Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us

Photo of the week: This San Francisco Trolley photo taken by, friend and co-founder of TECH cocktail Eric Olson, was the first photo I found on Flickr related to the Web 2.0 Expo this week in SF.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 04.15.07

The Web 2.0 Expo Is Upon Us
I just arrived in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo. It should be an exciting week of sessions, demos and launch parties in the city by the bay. If you are in town and want to meetup tonight (Sunday) check out this little meetup but keep in mind, this is NOT a TECH cocktail event like the one we just hosted in Chicago - it is just a meetup in SF.

Google Spends $3.1 Billion To Acquire DoubleClick
Makes sense as Google is truly an advertising company. Google announced that they have agreed to acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in cash. Microsoft was reportedly in a bidding war with Google for the company. That is a lot of cash. Rumor has it they are buying the Internet just after the 2016 Chicago Olympics. :-) 

Birth of the Social Aggregator
Social Networks, Blogs and Startpages have long been treated as separate categories of web-based applications. According to Widgify, it is about to change. 

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups To Date
Rev2.org lists its take on the most successful web 2.0 startups. With FeedBurner’s domination of the feed management space I would probably add them to this list. But you probably know already I am a FeedBurner fan.

New RSS 2.0 spec site deployed
Dave Winer has been working on a project to "future-safe" the Harvard site that houses the RSS 2.0 spec. Yesterday, he redirected from the old site to the new one. Congrats Dave on the new site! 

Search for People Across the Social Network Sites
yoName is a search engine that allows you to search friends (not just) on these 6 big networks. 

Introducing FoundRead
GigaPapi GigaOm is at it again as he has launched FoundRead, a shared resource, where anyone can contribute, either through their posts, or experiences or comments. You can choose to contribute freely or anonymously. Great idea Om, congrats on the launch. 

Hot Startup Checklist: Spam A Lot?
An interesting chart of Valleywag (masters of the pie charts, graphs, slides, etc.) highlighting some of the most promising startups.

TECH cocktail 4: Wow, that was fun!

With April flurries plaguing the Midwest the past few days, TECH cocktail 4 offered the Chicago technology and entrepreneurial community a place to get out of the cold spring weather to enjoy an evening of fun. With a number of activities and another excellent turnout which included an appearance by the AudioSnacks mascot a 6 plus foot llama, I think this might have been our best TECH cocktail yet. I think this might have been our best TECH cocktail yet. The venue, John Barleycorn Wrigleyville, was ideal, the demos were great, the sponsors rocked and the guests were wonderful. Unlike the other events, I had more time at this event to mingle with everyone. It was a lot of fun. I think Frank "the Tank" in the movie Old School played by Will Ferrell expresses how I feel about last night's TECH cocktail 4 the best with this quote:

Frank: I had an awesome time!
Beanie: I know that you had an awesome time. I think the entire town knows you had an awesome time.
[to Mitch]
Beanie: And wouldn't you want those times to keep on going?

Of course we will continue to have additional TECH cocktail events. There will be some interesting news coming on the TECH cocktail site in the next few days. Stay tuned by subscribing to updates via RSS or email.

Thank you to everyone that sponsored (shown in the video above). Also thanks to all the great startups that demo'ed their products last night. They included:

Interactive Mediums - Offers innovative text message voting and social interactivity.
Menuism - Rate not only the restaurant but also the specific dish or dishes.
Parkwhiz - Innovative parking search and parking spot marketplace.
Text2Store - Get great deals from local stores via text message.
TimeXchange - Manage your consulting time in a social setting.
Zaplee - VOIP call center software built around skype.

Menuism was the crowd favorite but they all have some wonderful offerings - congrats to all!

Thank you to all our sponsors (see video below) for making TECH cocktail possible. Thanks to everyone that attended. I hope you had a pleasant evening. Obviously, thank you to co-founder Eric Olson. Also I would like to thank my family and friends who they have been extremely helpful and supportive. Finally, thank you to both Eric's (FeedBurner) and my (AOL) employers as they have been extremely supportive of our TECH cocktail creation.

Photos from the event can be found here tagged: techcocktail4.

Check out some of these other reviews of TECH cocktail 4 on The Hot Iron, Olson's Observations and Networking Insight.

Google Sued, Microsoft Buys TellMe, AOL Local, Last.fm Video, Attention Economy Overload & TECH cocktail 4 Coming Soon

Photo of the Week: This is a photo I took in my old neighborhood in Lincoln Park in Chicago prior to moving on to AOL in Virginia. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.18.07

Viacom Drops a $1 Billion Nuke on Google
Remember when Napster was a lawsuit target for helping to foster pirated music? When Google acquired YouTube everyone wondered who would be the first company to try and collect on video copyright infringement in a similar fashion. We now know, as Viacom was the first to step to the plate with a one billion dollar lawsuit against Google. Complete.com offers some interesting analysis on the situation.

AOL moves AOL Local Search into Beta - it's very slick
CenterNetworks reviewed the latest beta to come out of AOL. AOL Local refreshes the local options as a user moves around a map. So start in 10036 (Times Square) and move to 11235 (Brooklyn) and the options move.

Microsoft to Acquire Tellme Networks
Tellme Networks, Inc., a leading provider of voice services for everyday life, including nationwide directory assistance, enterprise customer service and voice-enabled mobile search. Microsoft and Tellme share a vision around the potential of speech as a way to enable access to information, locate other people and enhance business processes, any time and from any device.

Last.fm Adds Video Tracking
The Register reported earlier this week that social music play, Last.fm has added the ability to not only track the music you play on iTunes and other services but now is going to start doing the same with video.

Report: New Bloggers Flatlined in 2005, Reading Climbs
Steve Rubel reports that according to the latest State of the News Media report, the share of the online population that tried blogging peaked back in January 2005 at 10% and has hovered since at 8%. Blog readership, on the other hand is climbing.

The Attention Economy is Killing My Attention
Nick O'Neill explains how the attention economy may be producing information overload. He wonders how product like twitter along with blogs will be able to co-exisit as people piling on attention commitments.

Del.icio.us Adds Tag Descriptions
Del.icio.us, the popular social bookmarking site owned by Yahoo, has added a new feature which enables users to for the first time not only tag items but also add meta-data to title and describe each tag.

Goplan launches!
Webreakstuff has launched a new product called Goplan which offers a suite of online project management and collaboration tools that could draw comparisons to 37signals' product line.

TECH cocktail 4: Going, Going, Gone
TECH cocktail 4, the forth event in the event series I co-founded with Eric Olson back in July 2006, is now on its fourth event and we filled a 500 person guest list in 23 hours. Wowsers! TECH cocktail 4 will be on April 12, 2007 at John Barleycorn Wrigleyville in Chicago but due to the overwhelming response we have started a TECH cocktail 4 wait-list for anyone still interested in going. I hope to see you there.
 

New My Yahoo Beta Reactions, Google Phone, Feedbase Preview, ClearSpring Funded, Free Wi-fi & 5 Design Principles

Photo of the Week: This photo of a robot titled bleeplaps by Eric Skiff was taken at SXSW which is going on this weekend in Austin, Texas.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.11.07

My Yahoo! Gets Web 2.0 Makeover
Just as Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel hinted at last week, the new My Yahoo Beta was launched this week to offer an drag and drop experience that mirrors the current Yahoo home page. There were a number of media reactions to the product. Steve Rubel feels that the new My Yahoo is abandoning the geeks. Erick Schonfeld thinks Yahoo is chasing web 2.0 dreams. While Greg Linden explained how Yahoo will be adding more personalization to My Yahoo.

Freebase Will Prove Addictive
Freebase, launched this week to create an online database, is to centralize as much data as possible to allow participants to freely add and access data - developers can extract information from Freebase via a set of APIs and add it to their web applications. This application, if true to its mission, could be huge.

A Roundup of Tools & Applications For Developers
Brian Benzinger pulls together a hardy list of web applications for project planning, system administration, usability testing, collaborative development, and web services to help "Developers, Developers, Developers…".

Criteo’s AutoRoll: What Readers are Reading
Eric Olson showcases a new blog widget by Criteo called the AutoRoll that displays links to blogs that your readers should like similar to the way MyBlogLog offers up popular links in each blog community. Based on each unique reader's affinity for each specific blog, the Criteo Recommendation Engine will compute on a real-time basis the relative affinity of all blogs.

Google Phone: Team of 100 working on Blackberry like….?
Is Google planning to follow Apple's lead into the phone industry?

Clearspring Raises $5.5M for Widget Service
ClearSpring, the Arlington, Virginia-based widget marketplace, which helps content owners widgetize and widget makers hook up with web and desktop distribution platforms, has raised $5.5 million in its second round of funding, for a total of $7.5 million raised.

Start-up to launch FREE wireless network in Silicon Valley
Meraki Networks, a Mountain View, California-based start-up is planning to build a free wireless Internet network in central San Francisco, and all residents have to do is put a small wireless router supplied by the company in their window or rooftop, to bring free wireless Internet access.

Five Principles to Design By
Web designer Joshua Porter gives five principles he designs social media web sites by.

Newsgator Online Beta: Better Than Before - Still Not Good Enough
Marshall Kirkpatrick gives his perspective on the recently released Newsgator online feed reader beta product.

Feedable Puts a Memetracker in Your RSS Reader
Steve Rubel reviews the new Ajax feed reader called Feedable and expresses his liking of its "memetracker" feature. The "memetracker" is built right in and shows you what the hottest items of the day are.

Is Your Site Mobile Ready?

Is your site mobile ready? .mobi has launched, ready .mobi, a mobile-readiness test to help site owners. You simply put in your URL and using industry best practices & standards you find out if the site is mobile ready.  Unfortunately, Somewhat Frank is not currently fully mobile ready. You can visit the Somewhat Frank Mobile Version but it currently is only detecting and redirecting users visiting the site with Windows CE over to the mobile version.

Eric Olson previously wrote a piece explaining how to setup a mobile version of your site leveraging the FeedBurner BuzzBoost feature and simple server level http redirects. This method works wonderfully if you have server level access. Somewhat Frank is on Typepad, the SixApart hosted blog platform, and does not enable the same server level access as host it yourself solutions. Typepad does not  currently offer an out of the box mobile browser detection solution. I contacted TypePad support about it and JavaScript was mentioned as an option but no clear details were given so I found some JavaScript to handle Windows CE users. If anyone knows of other mobile redirect solutions that could be implemented on hosted blog platforms like Typepad please let me know.