SOMEWHAT FRANK

PLEO: A Low Maintenance Robotic Pet Dinosaur

Having a pet can be a lot of responsibility and time. For jettsetters like myself I have had to go the low maintenance route the last few years as I had a pet fish. Unfortunately, my pet fish just passed away yesterday after 3 years - R.I.P. Art the Beta Fish. :(  So I may be in the market for a new pet and I have been looking for other alternatives to having a pet which have included pet rocks, chia pets and other options. I recently visited the office my friend Micah Baldwin at Lijit and met his office pet, Kyle, a lovable green PLEO robotic pet dinosaur by UGOBE.

Check out my visit with Kyle the PLEO dinosaur in episode 48 on SOMEWHAT FRANK - adventures into a personal technology lifestyle, in the video below.

PLEO: A Low Maintenance Robotic Pet Dinosaur from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

Playyoo Mobile Gaming Network Launches

Playyoo, a social networking platform for creating and sharing mobile casual games, officially opens its beta doors to the public today. Described by TechCrunch as the "YouTube For Mobile Games," Playyoo (www.playyoo.com or m.playyoo.com on mobile phones) allows anyone to create and submit mobile games to its network. Users can create, share and discover new mobile experiences all via Playyoo.

Playyoo, a privately held company based in London, England, offers game developers a place to create and distribute Adobe Flash Lite mobile games. But you don't have to be a seasoned game developer to create a Playyoo game as it offers integrated game creator tools to enable anyone to develop and publish a mobile game creation.

Hasbro Should Just Buy Scrabulous Already

Are you a Scrabble fan?  Scrabble, the popular word game trademarked by Hasbro, Inc. has been the topic of debate recently as an online alternative was created to operate as a Facebook application called Scrabulous. Scrabulous was created by Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla within the last six months already has over 600,000 active daily users. Amazing! According to an ABC News report, Hasbro is outraged about the creation of the copycat game and as AllFacebook reports they are trying to force Facebook to remove it. Am I missing something?

What the heck is doof?

Dooflets. Doofspace. DoofPulse. Doof. What is doof? According to Wikipedia doof is a type of outdoor dance party in Australia. The Urban Dictionary defines doof as a foolish person. While I may be a fool, I am not in Australia and the doof I am referring to is actually a fun little social startpage built around casual gaming.

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.

Ruckus Aims Free Music At College Kids

Ruckus Networks, a Herndon,Virginia-based startup, has been making some noise on college campuses across the US. Ruckus is a college-only multimedia service offering free ad-supported downloads to college students.  After some initial bad reviews, Ruckus seems to be making moves and gaining traction. Ruckus has over 3 million music tracks available and just recently launched a Facebook application, extensive social networking capabilities, and an improved video service just in time for the new school year.

Fafarazzi: Celebrity Fantasy Leagues

Are you a celebrity news junkie? If so, you might want to check out Fafarazzi and put your celebrity tracking habits to use. Fafarazzi, a Massachusetts-based startup created by Eastland Media,  offers place for celebrity news lovers to go head-to-head via celebrity fantasy sports leagues.

PMOGs Turn The Web Into A Game

Are you looking for a little more out of the time and energy you spend on the Web?  If so, you might want to check out a Passively Multiplayer Online Game or PMOG. A proposal created by Justin Hall, Passively Multiplayer Online Games look to create a game around your Web attention data. Justin Hall has been referred to by the NYTimes as the "the founding father of personal bloggers" and decided to create a game out of the Web with PMOGs as part of his Masters project at the USC Annenberg Center.

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.

Ujogo For Serious Free Online Poker

Ujogo, a Silicon Valley-based startup, just launched into public beta poised to create a more competitive and satisfying free online poker site than its competitors. Targeting the estimated 30 million free online poker players, Ujogo will cater to all demographics, including the 40 plus percent of woman playing online these days.

In talking with Ujogo founder and CEO Eric Gonzalez, he explained that the current set of free online poker options are highly unsatisfying because he believes people do not have enough at stake, therefore players have an unrealistic irrational style of play. Eric and his team looks to change that with Ujogo by offering incentives for solid play through monthly leader boards and tournaments. Ujogo offers two currencies within the application:

Ujogo points - frequent player points received for playing whether you win or lose redeemable in the Ujogo store.
Ujogo cash - internal game currency that can be accumulated over time (i.e. monthly winners, etc.) can be cashed in for additional points for prizes.

Ujogo includes basic social networking aspects within the site to enable player to find out a little more about their competitors. Ujogo incorporates educational tools to help players learn to play poker better. Included in site are videos from Expert Insight (Phil Gordon - Poker Player Pro) to help players to learn and improve. In addition, Ujogo gives players personalized analytical tools and metrics on their play that allows them to recall and better understand their poker trends. Ujogo plans to roll out additional metrics options with time.

Ujogo received one million dollars in angel funding in February 2007 and followed it up by acquiring an online poker company called GamingEverywhere.com in April 2007. The GamingEverywhere.com poker application acts as the backbone of the clean and realistic online poker playing interface.  Ujogo's business model supports ad revenue and plans to offer about half that revenue in prize packages for leading players within the Ujogo community. So if you want to win some great prizes and elevate your level of poker play you might want to deal into Ujogo for a few free online poker hands - You could win big!

Mojits iPhone Web Widget Launcher

If you have an iPhone you may be trying to figure out a way to optimize your widget experience. Mojits offers a potential solution as it provides a place to find web widgets optimized for the iPhone.

Currently, Mojits offers a couple dozen web widget options which include AIM iPhone Chat, iPhone Digg, iPhone Twitter, TaDa List and many more.

Simply create a Mojits account, configure your Mojits to your liking and then navigate to the Mojits Launcher on your iPhone with Safari. My Mojits is shown below.

HeyCosmo Launches Free Interactive WebCam Collaboration Service

HeyCosmo, a product of Arsenal Interactive a Mountain View, California-based startup founded by Jason Im, launched into external beta yesterday to offer an interactive webcam platform with a host of collaboration tools.

I first met, HeyCosmo founder and CEO, Jason Im at Community Next in February and then hung out with him at the W Hotel in SF and got a preview of the product after the Web 2.0 Expo. In seeing the demo I could see HeyCosmo becoming extremely popular as it adds a "real" element to normal online interaction. It blends a Meeting Place or WebEx type application with the visual interactivity via a web cam. However, HeyCosmo does not appear to be positioning itself as a business application but more a fun way to sync up and have fun with friends online. With HeyCosmo you can have up to 10 live web-cam video participants and up to 50 people can listen, watch, and chat during a session. So imagine leveraging HeyCosmo to play a crazy game of poker online. You don't have to imagine too hard because HeyCosmo is already helping you to do it - check out the screen-shot below.

Since HeyCosmo is in beta it is only currently offered for use with Internet Explorer but I would expect that to change with time as HeyCosmo works out all the beta kinks. TechCrunch offers additional perspective on HeyCosmo.

"i'm in like with you" For Playing Games

As a single male, in my late late twenties who has never used a traditional dating site in my life, I decided to expand my horizons and check out "i'm in like with you," the online dating site which puts a flirtatious spin on meeting people online.

Upon receiving an invite to "i'm in like with you" (thank you Jeremy Pepper) I set up my profile and performed a few people searches. I found some matches I wanted to add as contacts and I could not figure out how. I was at a loss for a few minutes as I tried to figure out how to add a contact from within the site and connect with others within the community. In talking with others that have used the site, I confirmed this was a common issue with using the site for the first time. I was under the impression that I would search and connect with new friends but it is not that easy.

"i'm in like with you" is driven by points which are the currency of the community. Users can collect and use points to navigate through the site to add friends. Users can get points by:

• logging in everyday
• answering profile questions
• picking winners for your closed games
• for being chosen as the winner of a game

Users setup games that others within the community can bid on with points. This was a bit of a turn off to me as it makes it difficult and time consuming to meet people within the community as only the top bidders get to connect with the user who setup the game. However, I could see how a user could get very involved in the community. My "i'm in like with you" profile is shown below.

i'm in like with you Photo Gallery

   

A Web Of Superheroes

So you probably have seen by now the slew of articles that start out "What superhero are you?", "What superhero am I?" or "I am <fill in the blank with a superhero name>." To further amplify the signal of this blogospheric chain-letter, I will participate in one final meme of 2006. A few weeks ago I was tagged for the "5 things meme" and participated by posting 5 things about me - this time it is the "superhero meme." Upon answering a number of random questions on a rather amateur looking, Google Adsense-heavy web site, I received the following results: 

You are The Flash

The Flash 80% Superman 75% Iron Man 70% Robin 57% Spider-Man 50% Hulk 50% Green Lantern 45% Batman 45% Supergirl 42% Wonder Woman 37% Catwoman 30%

Fast, athletic and flirtatious.

I guess all those years of childhood wearing superhero underoos have somehow paid off! Which Superhero are you?

Photo attribution: POSITiv via Flickr
 

Holiday Gift Guides For 2006

Have you been too busy to focus on holiday shopping thus far? There is still time to shop if you know what you are looking for. If not, there are a number of gift guides online. I have consolidated some of them below. If you have a blogger or web 2.0 fanatic to buy for you might think about one of the three following options:

1.) The FooBar Poster - You have probably seen this poster by eBoy as it has been popping up everywhere.
2.) Cool tee shirts - I particularly enjoy the tee shirt collection by Mule Design. Hugh MacLeod from Gaping Void offers gear while Begin Five also of online comic fame also offers some tees.  Finally, don't forget TECH cocktail gear!
3.) Lap desk - Ideal for night blogging.

Online music or movie gift cards (i.e. iTunes, etc) are also great gifts if you are looking for other options. UPDATE: Digg gear is pretty sweet too! If  you are shopping for gifts for a gadget lovers you might want to check out:

FM Holiday Gadget Guide
CNet Holiday Gift Guide
Extreme Tech Geek Gift Guide

If you are shopping for a gift for a man, Playboy and MenEssential give pointers:

Playboy Holiday Gift Guide
Holiday Gift Guide by MenEssentials

Uncrate has put together gift guides for women and children:

Women's Holiday Gift Guide
Kid's Holiday Gift Guide

Make Magazine has created a fantastic gift guide for open source hardware and software development:

The Open Source Gift Guide

Finally, if you are looking for the perfect gift for someone at the office you might want to check out the Office Toy Store. Happy Shopping!