SOMEWHAT FRANK

How Does Friend Connect Put Users In Control?

Google will be launching Friend Connect tonight to turn the open Web a place for open social apps to run wild as a motivator adoption mechanism for the new Google Gadget 2.0 format with OpenSocial across the Web. With Google powering email and search and collecting user data, I wonder about this new social component and about user controls. I did not get a chance to ask this question on the call due to what may have been technical issues but regardless I wanted to throw it out there to the blogosphere to give their SOMEWHAT FRANK perspectives on the following:

  How Does Google Friend Connect Put Users In Control?

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below if you have a SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion.

Twitter Accounts For Sale, Google App Engine Launches, Business Development 2.0, PageFlakes In Trouble? & Online Rep Tracking

Photo of the Week: With tax day looming on April 15th, I spent many hours this past week & weekend going through and organizing paperwork just like the photo above taken by Camilo Rueda López which resulted in less time to blog.

SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 4.13.2008

Google Apps Future, Mobile Phone Novelists, Edgeio Shut Down, Zuckerberg's $40m In Stock, MyStrands Funded & 100% Biodiesel Jet

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Joey Wan while she visited Laguna Beach recently. It had me California dreaming!

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 12.09.07

Video: How To Build A Google Android App

Android, Google's open source mobile platform, was announced last week to enable developers to easily create mobile applications. Android will make development for mobile applications for different handsets easier. With over 30 carriers and manufactures on board with Google's Android Platform, new applications should probably start rolling out early in 2008. Creating an Android application is supposed to be easy so I tried to find out how by scouring the Web for some examples. I found an interesting "how to" video included in this article.

StumbleUpon & Hitwise Acquired, Netvibes Universe Launches, Web 2.0 Expo Wrap-up, AOL India & Education 2.0

Photo of the Week: I snapped this photo of the West Wing while celebrating Earth Day 2007 on the White House grounds.

eBay Acquires StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon was acquired by eBay for between $40 to $75 million but it seems Google Google tried to rain on their parade with a toolbar update.

Hitwise Acquired by Experian for $240 Million
All of those great charts that Hitwise so freely provide us, have paid off big time for the web intelligence company. Information services provider Experian has announced their cash purchase of Hitwise for $240 million.

Netvibes Launches Universe: Customized Public Pages
Netvibes launched Universe, allowing users to create highly customized versions of Netvibes and publish them for public access. Netvibes has created 100 or so branded versions for the launch - users will be able to create these soon. Netvibes hosted a huge launch party this past Monday in San Francisco.

What Every Video Aggregator Site Needs
Here are a few things that every Video Aggregator website needs in order to stay afloat in this ever-crowding market.

AOL Launching Next Week In India
AOL President and COO Ron Grant is going to be in India next week for the launch of AOL’s India portal.

Google Feed API
Google Reader finally has its first official API. Any developer in the world can request the entire history of a web feed from Google's geo-distributed server cloud in a normalized response for inclusion in their websites or products.

Web 2.0 Expo: All Things Widgets
The Web 2.0 Expo included two sessions on widgets. Also, offline web apps could be the next big thing after seeing an Apollo demo, by Kevin Lynch of Adobe.

Web 2.0 takes On Colleges And Universities: Education 2.0
In the shift from an intellectual economy of push, to one of pull, the evolving participatory media are making their impact felt . It is no longer enough to pump out information like gasoline and expect authentic learning to take place - the new generation.

Google vs. Microsoft, Hollywood Disrupted, OpenID Explained, BitTorrent Video Store and the Feed Reader Market

Photo of the week: With the 79th Academy Awards tonight I felt this photo title Over Hollywood Sign by Jorge Mir offered a good point of perspective.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.25.07

Hollywood Disrupted By Social Media?
An opinion piece in the LA Times, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”, explains how Hollywood is losing its place as the epicenter of cultural products and how movies are losing their relevance as the "barometers of the American psyche". Personally, social media has definitely pulled me away from more and more television and movies the last couple of years.

BitTorrent.com Launches Video Store
BitTorrent Inc, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing software, has released the final details of their long awaited video store. The store itself will go live this Monday, and will offer movie rentals at $2.99 - $3.99, and “download to own” TV shows.

It’s G-Day: Google Launches Apps Premier
Google has Microsoft squarely in its cross-hairs as it launched Google Apps Premier, its subscription package of premium, hosted business applications in direct competition with Microsoft. It does not surprise me. Interestingly, this past week I also heard a radio advertisement for "Breakfast with Google," an event setup to showcase Google @ Work for government organizations.

How does OpenID work?
Good question, this video post offers some perspective on just how OpenID works as explained by Simon Willison. Also Digg announced this past week that they are going OpenID.

How Many Founders Does A Startup Need?
Brad Feld looked at number of founders in successful Internet businesses. The average is 2.09 founders and Brad discusses this number and gives his input.

Netvibes2Go, Pretty Good Actually
GigaOm takes a look at Netvibes mobile experience and reports back on it. Basically, Netvibes setup is easy: create a tab in Netvibes called “Mobile,” and drop in some of these modules.

The State of the Web-based RSS Reader Market
FeedBurner released a great look into the feed market and Read/Write Web took it a step-further by examining the web-based feed reader market. The article also pulls in some numbers from another feed-based business called Pheedo.

Next Net: 25 startups to watch
Business 2.0 has once again listed 25 startups to watch in 2007. Here are last years 25 hottest startups.