The video I decided to highlight this week happens to showcase a friend of mine, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington as he appeared on the San Francisco Bay area local Fox affiliate discussing being named one of the Forbes top 25 web celebs. Other notables include Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Jason Calacanis, Steve Rubel, Pete Cashmore, Kevin Rose, Ryan Block, Seth Godin and "Giga" Om Malik.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
iPhone Chat Apps, Social Networking Exhaustion, Personalization Search, PodTech Marketing, Attention Toolbar Launches, Feed Truncation & Suits Suck
Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Brian Solis of bub.blicio.us at the TechCrunch event in Menlo Park, California on Friday evening (Suits Suck tee shirt photo explained in first story below).
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.29.07
TechCrunch 9 & A Funny "Suit"?
I was in attendance
for the event on Friday evening at August Capital in Menlo Park and had a great time. There were loads of interesting web 2.0-fabulous guests in attendance. Thanks to Mike Arrington, Heather Harde and the rest of the TechCrunch crew for a wonderful evening. The guest (who I won't name publicly) wearing the "Suits Suck" tee shirt (shown above) said he was a
Google employee in the marketing department and made me laugh. As I sipped on some Stormhoek white wine, he asked me and Nick Gonzalez, also a TechCrunch contributor, "what Mike Arrington looks like?" because he
was looking to connect with him at the party. After both Nick and I took our best cracks at explaining what Mike Arrington looks like he left us to continue on his mission. So let me re-cap, the guy shows up
wearing a colorful "Suits Suck" tee, works at Google in the marketing
department, attends the TechCrunch party looking to connect with Mike Arrington but
doesn't know what he looks like. Doh! Solid strategy, I wonder if he is a "suit" himself in disguise? You be the judge. ;)
Fichey: New Web Discovery Player
Fichey is a little player that float on top of the page and lets you navigate and discover new sites and links from the Web. Display search results from : Del.icio.us, Digg, Downfly, Reddit and StumbleUpon.
The many paths of personalization
Greg Linden explains at some point, the only way to further improve the quality of search results will be to show different people different search results based on what they think is relevant.
At that point, we have personalized search. Showing different results to different people based on what you know of their interests is personalized search.
Social Network Exhaustion (or Facebook Bankruptcy Redux)
Jason Calacanis gives up on Facebook and tries to rationalize by saying: "Facebook
is a multilevel marketing platform where you agree to pay attention to
people's gestures in the hopes that those people will pay-attention to
your gestures in the future. It's a gesture bank."
Video Review: Mini Moo Cards
CenterNetworks offers a video review of MOO and its print 2.0 ways.
Dear Podtech: I’m Not Your VP Marketing
Mike Arrington explains that Podtech is on the right track by focusing
on aggregating third party content under its Flash player and
advertising network and moving away from the highly-competitive content
creation game.
The new Particls Sidebar
The new Particls Sidebar launched to offer a personalized, streaming view of everything that matters to you online.
First Look: AideRSS Feed Filtering
AideRSS, which launches today, is a new type of RSS filtering service that uses a proprietary system called PostRank to determine the best posts on each blog.
iRazoo Latest to Launch Human-Powered Search Engine
A new social search engine that is looking to promote human-powered recommendations the foundation of its service.
Truncated RSS Feeds Kill Conversations and Long Term Traffic
Ed Kohler of Technology Evangelist explains why truncated feeds offer a pretty terrible user experience thus killing conversations and long term traffic.
Top 5 Chat/IM Apps for the iPhone
Before the iPhone, swarms of Blackberry and Windows Mobile users accessed instant messengers through a variety of different downloadable clients and websites. The iPhone, however, forces developers to create something that’s usable in the browser. Rev2.org takes a look at the options.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Microsoft Buying Yahoo?, Goodbye Yahoo Photos, YouTube RevShare, Small the New Big, Conference Success & Twittering
Photo of the Week: This was the view from Sweet View on Derby Day at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois.
Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 05.06.07
Microsoft to Buy Yahoo? Nope.
Stung by the loss of Internet advertising firm DoubleClick to Google
last month, Microsoft has intensified its pursuit of a deal with
Yahoo!, asking the company to re-enter formal negotiations, The Post
has learned. Opps, false alarm.
Breaking:
Yahoo To Shut Down Yahoo Photos In Favor Of Flickr
The Yahoo Photos service will
be shut down in favor of the newer and more social Flickr, which they
acquired in March of 2005. Peanut butter clean-up?
YouTube
Makes Some Members Content Partners
Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners
and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos
they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place
advertising adjacent to their content and share the revenue with the
content producer.
Small is The
New Big
Now that Web 2.0 is growing up, scale no longer matters. GigaOm
explains how even tiny businesses—like transcription services—can go
global.
eBay
widgets
What a fantastic and easy way to promote your auctions or Ebay fund
raisers on your blog! The set-up for this widget is very simple to
figure out. There are no technical hurdles for newbies to worry about.
The
(Re)Birth of Mobile Banking
While the upcoming iPhone launch is capturing the lion’s share of
attention in the Wireless industry, the re-introduction of Mobile
Banking has been at the core of a movement to make a cell phone your
next wallet.
Calacanis’
latest, Project X, Kokua?
Jason Calacanis, co-founder of Weblogs Inc., and now an
entrepreneur-in-action at Sequoia Capital is working on a new company
called, Project X. Valleywag published some details about the company
earlier this week, that has the apparent backing of Mark Cuban. I am
hoping Mark also buys the Chicago Cubs at seasons end.
Most
Profitable Web 2.0 Business: Conferences
The tech conference
business continues to amaze me. They are true champion revenue
generators of the web 2.0 area.
Rebrand
& New Features: Google IG To Relaunch as iGoogle
Google’s
personalized home page, Google IG, has been rebranded as iGoogle and
launched at igoogle.com.
Twittering more than blogging
I sent 1,327 text messages last month, many of which were related to
twitter so I have to say that I did not write anywhere near 1,327 blog
posts in the same time. Marshall Kirkpatrick explains how he is has
been twittering a lot more than blogging as well.
Monday, April 16, 2007
TechCrunch20 Conference Details
Looking for a fall conference to attend? Mike Arrington, editor of TechCrunch, has just announced the details
of the TechCrunch20 conference at the VC 2.0 session he moderated at the Web 2.0 Expo. The conference is being co-organized by Jason Calacanis and
Mike Arrington and sponsored by Sequoia Capital with the idea of highlighting 20 of the hottest startups at the event. GigaOm
offers more details.The event will be held at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco September
17 thru 18, 2007 with tickets ranging between $1,995 and $2,495 depending upon ticket purchase date. You can register now.
GigaOm offers some additional perspective on TechCrunch20.
If you are looking for other conferences to attend you might want to check out this roundup of 2007 conferences.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
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
|
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
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
AIM Share Links With Your Buddy List
AIM Share launched today to offer you the ability to share your favorite Somewhat Frank blog posts links or interesting stories as an alert to your entire AOL Instant Messenger buddy list. This could come in handy if you are big on sharing. Rather than clogging your friends email just ping them a link all at once via AIM Share. 
AIM Share offers a bookmarklet that can be added to your browser toolbar so users have easy access to the share feature from any webpage. Users can also add additional site updates into their buddy alerts by updating AIM Buddy Network settings.
Jason Calacanis who recently departed AOL had this to say of AIM Share:
"AIM Share is like AIM + Delicious.com = CRAZY DELICIOUS!"
Interesting analogy - simple yet sweet. I definitely think AIM Share could be a useful tool for both personal and professional use.
Startup Mixology: Tech Cocktail's Guide To Building, Growing & Celebrating Startup Success by Frank Gruber
