SOMEWHAT FRANK

Experiencing History In DC

Today in Washington, DC, I was able to attend the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Though the festivities were streamed live via CNN and Facebook with commentary from my friends I decided I needed to experience this historic event in person. So I jumped on the Metro and made my way to the National Mall. In doing so I captured a number of images and videos which will serve as lasting memories of this historic day. The Internet connections via the wireless towers in the DC area were brought to a crawl so it was tough to stream videos from the Mall but I captured what I could with both Flixwagon and Qik. I also posted my Inauguration photos on Flickr.

Enjoy the videos below from my Inauguration experience:

Walking down 18th Street to the National Mall for the Inauguration

Watching the Inauguration from the National Mall

Obama Speaks

Social Networking & The 2008 Election

With the 2008 Presidential election only 48 days away it has been a rather unique one as no other election that I can recall has gone on this long or leveraged mobile and web technology so resoundingly. I previously called this Election 2.0 as it is leveraging the new Web 2.0 technologies as they race for the White House. Today I participated on a super panel discussion at the NVTC Cool Tech event focused on the effects of social networking sites on the election 2008 and I was joined by:

Ben Adler, Staff Writer, Politico.com
Joel Cherkis, General Manager, Government Solutions, Microsoft
Ed O'Keefe, Multimedia Journalist, Washingtonpost.com

MODERATOR: Wyatt Andrews, CBS News

The panel was moderated by the very polished, Wyatt Andrews, a veteran CBS News reporter. It was a pleasure to meet Wyatt and to learn of his experiences, including, his experience serving as White House correspondent for George Bush Sr.

First Bloom Helps Replant Trees on Earth Day

"The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a  focusing lens on what we can become."

—Lady Bird Johnson

Welcome to Flickr Library of Congress

The Library of Congress just informed me of a new project they have undertaken with, Web 2.0 photo community, Flickr. In addition to posting photos on its own the Library of Congress website they have decided to also start putting historic photo sets on Flickr for all the world to see. The Library of Congress is looking to show off its photos to a larger photo centric community. With some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on Flickr. Wow!

Pentagon Hacked, iPhone Announcements, Facebook People Search, 10 Web Trends, Delicious Preview, MyStrands Music Video & Netscape Digg Clone Gone

Photo of the Week: I took this photo of Red Sox on the gates of Fenway Park while visiting Boston this weekend for TECH cocktail Boston.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 09.09.2007

JibJab Video Includes Bloggers

JibJab, the online video site which came to fame during the 2004 U.S. presidential election with videos like "The Land," has created a new video series called the "The News" and has decided to include some bloggers. Bloggers Mike Arrington, Robert Scoble and Chris Pirillo were featured around the 1:20 mark of the video below. If you squint while watching, you might catch a glimpse of my face in the crowd of people.

Good: For People That Give A Damn

Good is a media company aimed at creating a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world. Good, an L.A.-based company founded by Ben Goldhirsh, offers up a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events.

The print publication is a work of art as the photos and compelling articles are extremely well done making is difficult to think there is only a month worth of prep time between issues. Good Magazine makes if feel good to become a subscriber as 100% of your subscription cost goes to help the participating charity of your choice. With a goal set of 50,000 subscribers and $1 million dollars given away by mid 2007, Good is about a quarter of the way to its goal.

On the web, Good covers a number of my favorite topics and makes it easy to filter to specific categories like Technology,  Art & Design, Business & Money and Media. Good employs an "It's Good" Digg-like rating system on each article in addition to offering RSS feeds by topic. In addition, Good has created close to a dozen video shorts on a number of different topics. The first video in the SplashCast below is titled, Paying for Your Attention points out how much advertisers are paying for your attention.

Good will be teaming up with Creative Commons, a Good supported organization, to host a party at South By Southwest Interactive on March 12, 2007. If you are headed to Austin for the event I recommend you check it out - judging by its NYC launch party I am sure it will be a GOOD time.

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.

Constituent Dynamics Polls For Predictive Election Results

A few weeks ago I profiled The Washington Stock Exchange, a new site offering political junkies the opportunity to play in a special stock exchange dedicated to political probabilities.  With just over two weeks remaining until election day, there have been a number of political sites emerging to better tell the election story.

Constituent Dynamics offers an amazingly in depth look at the political reality.  The site focuses on new polling methods to produce more accurate and predictive results.  While targeted toward professional political operatives, the Majority Watch project offers an impressive look at the midterm elections that any lay-man can enjoy.  Majority Watch features updating polling data for key races, with more being added everyday plotted on a map (shown below). Similarly, Google has also recently rolled out their own election focused mashup which combines Google Earth with information about the upcoming congressional elections.

If you are looking for election news, Constituent Dynamics offers more information than is offered on many mainstream news site, you can select an individual District to view demographic breakdowns and side-by-side data comparing the midterm race against the last presidential election.  All said, it is an impressive site for anyone interested in politics in general, or this year's tumultuous midterm elections in particular. Of course, if you are looking for additional content and analysis, you might want to visit The Stump - AOL News Elections Blog, AOL's recently launched elections blog.

The Washington Stock Exchange: Stock Market For Political Futures

In more than enough time to catch the horse race, The Washington Stock Exchange (WSX for short) has appeared online. Although still in beta, the site offers users the ability to bet on future political events; things like whether the Republicans will retain control of the Senate come November, if Senator Barack Obama will announce a Presidential Run for '08, or if Bin Laden will be captured in 2007.

The Washington Stock Exchange mirrors the New York Stock Exchange as events are set to stocks and the stock price represents the likelihood that the specific event will occur. The site does not provide much information on the actual company that developed it but it does boast a very scholarly Advisory Board. Joining is free and membership includes $1 million dollars to play around with, so it's all fun and games at this point.

On Election Day we will see how accurate of a predictor the WSX really is. Yet, there are some issues that still need to be worked out. For example, in the highly publicized Connecticut Senate race between Senator Joe Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont, Lieberman's stock is valued at $83.89 while Lamont's is $26.89. Perhaps it's counter-intuitive, but if Lieberman has an 83% chance of victory, shouldn't Lamont have only a 17% chance? Perhaps statisticians can prove otherwise. Regardless, the site is an addictive place to go for those interested in politics or campaigning. The site also features data on each stock, including past performance and total shares. Graphs showing the fluctuating price of stocks like the one representing the GOP's control of the House of Representatives are especially interesting to examine given the present political climate. The GOP retaining US Senate control is also a stock option (as shown below).

All in all, The Washington Stock Exchange offers an intriguing opportunity for political-junkies to chart public perceptions. It draws comparisons to ProTrade, the professional sports stock exchange. If the site catches on, it may become a useful tool for the politicians as well.

*Special thanks to LBJ for assisting with this article on Somewhat Frank.

The White House Has RSS Feeds & Podcasts

With my recent move to the Washington, DC area I have been exploring what the new city has to offer and I noticed that the White House has RSS syndication feeds and podcasts. Yes, it's true.

It is great to see the government supporting the web 2.0 movement leveraging syndication feeds to get the White House updates out.  I'd love to see how many subscribers each feed has. I wonder if they are even capturing those metrics?

Of course, my favorite offering is a video podcast starring first pup, Scottish Terrier Barney.